It was nothing scheduled or optimized for performance.

It wasn’t tracked on an app or announced to an audience. Just a rhythm that was organic, unhurried and shared that most of us lived inside without ever naming it, that is until the day it was gone.

Someone would call the landline - not your own specific handheld device but a landline that was connected to the whole house.

Anybody could answer it to see who was on the other end.

Do you remember?

The phone that was fixed to the kitchen wall with the cord that never quite reached the couch but certainly could tangle you up in it successfully like a skinny boar constrictor.

The not knowing who it was calling on the other end was part of it.

You’d say, “Hello?’

And hear something like, “Hey, we’re going for a drive. You coming?”

There was no destination, no itinerary. Just four people in a car with the windows down and nowhere particular to be and that was the whole point.

Or someone would say, “There’s a movie marathon on Saturday night, starts at 11.00, bring food.” And you would. Then crash at a mate’s house and sleep somewhere on the floor, waking with a crick in your neck without a single regret about any of it.

Or a group would show up at the park without an event or hashtag beforehand, no announcement over social media either, all because someone had said, ‘'That place is a mess, let’s clean it up this weekend.”

And you did.

Because the park was yours - in your neighborhood and because you understood without being told that you were part of something larger than yourself and that it required something from you.

The Stoics had a word for this instinct: