I was talking to my roommate the other day and we happened across an interesting characteristic of North American life, namely, the rigid, plan-everything-beforehand, scheduled lifestyle.

This is in contrast to the spontaneous, carefree life of the third world. Both my roommate and I agreed that in our respective home countries, people are incredible casual about meeting up and hanging out. It’s usually not necessary to call and plan a meet before hand, you could just swing by your friend’s place and he or she will entertain you. Sure, they might be busy, but they’ll always take the time out to be a good host and hang out, even if only for a short while. If it’s night-time, it’s usually easy to rustle up a crew without myriad posturing, planning and the like.

Contrast this to life here. Almost every single social event has to be planned in advance. It’s impossible to call someone up and meet immediately. Indeed, it’s usually in poor taste to just show up unannounced at someone’s house. Everyone’s busy, or has prior engagements, or has to go to the gym, or do the laundry, etc. The usual answer is, “let me check my schedule, why don’t we plan something for Tuesday next week.” Of course, once planned, the event is set in stone and rescheduling is frowned upon. Spontaneity is just absent. To some degree, this is a consequence of our ever more complicated and busy world. Everyone is busy with work, trying to survive and so on.

Still, I think it detracts from a sense of community and closeness. Essentially, it enforces a minimum level of disconnectedness upon everyone. Connections need to be forged as opposed to being allowed to naturally occur. Fuck that shit. I don’t want to plan stuff out a week in advance. Sure, I’m growing up and I have a five year plan to take over the world. But for meeting friends and hanging out, let’s just keep that casual, schedule-free and impulsive. Isn’t that the way great happenings happen?

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