Too little
Closed familiarity
Everyone here already knows everyone.
The newcomer must somehow invent an entrance.
Hospitality
A welcome can fit on a small invitation.
Readiness to make room for an unfamiliar person without demanding that they first prove their worth.
Hospitality makes room for someone entering an unfamiliar social space. For a newcomer, a name, useful local information or an optional cup of tea can be enough. It does not require access to your home or a promise of friendship. The welcome works best when the newcomer can choose its size.
Hospitality gives a newcomer a way in
A new neighbor arrives behind a moving box. You have imagined a welcome so comprehensive that it may need its own event committee. “I’m next door. Would you like tea sometime, once you’ve settled?” leaves room for an answer. The committee can stay packed with the ceremonial bunting.
Finding the balance in Hospitality
An illustrative everyday situation
Offer a newcomer a modest invitation that can be declined.
A fitting response
An easy invitation
You are welcome to join us, if you would like.
There is a way in without a demand.
Pursued too far
Compulsory inclusion
You must come; we will not take no for an answer.
The welcome removes the freedom it should offer.
A welcome becomes more credible when a refusal is allowed to stand.
When the situation changes
A person may prefer practical information to company. Offer a possibility rather than prescribing how they should settle in.
What Hospitality makes possible
An optional welcome makes participation available without turning it into a condition of being a good neighbor. Some people will choose company; others will prefer helpful information and cordial distance.
Hospitality in ordinary life
A shared gathering
Explain who is who and leave space for the newcomer to listen.
Useful orientation
Offer the bin schedule or a shared-contact detail without requiring a personal history in exchange.
Nearby virtues, different work
Sincerity
Sincerity makes the invitation match your actual availability.
Discretion
Discretion leaves the newcomer in charge of what they disclose.
Hospitality and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Counterfeit: social recruitment
Welcoming someone only to enlist them in a faction makes access conditional.
Counterfeit: Counterfeit: invasive warmth
Personal questions are not the entry fee for neighborliness.
How to cultivate Hospitality
Offer a modest way to participate.
Say what is actually being offered.
Leave a declined invitation complete.
Try it today
When a suitable occasion arises, offer a newcomer one small welcome or useful piece of information. Make participation optional and do not press for personal details.
With neighbors
Make welcome easy to accept, and easy to decline.
Questions worth returning to
What does this invitation ask of its recipient?
Can they decline without having to defend themselves?
Keep the practice proportionate
Hospitality does not require opening your home, accepting unwanted visitors or pursuing someone who declines.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
and especially call him who lives near you:
Hesiod’s advice about inviting people to a feast singles out nearby households. The surrounding passage values neighbors who can arrive promptly in trouble; proximity can be a reason for an ordinary welcome.
He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier.
Charles Dickens · A Christmas Carol · English original, 1843 · Stave Five · excerpt
After Scrooge asks to join Fred’s dinner, he is readily welcomed. Hospitality makes an accepted invitation easy to enter, without requiring an elaborate performance from the guest.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.
Frost makes an ordinary errand into an invitation. This page borrows the modest scale of the welcome, not the assumption that every invitation will be accepted.
Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife.
Jane Austen · Emma · Volume I, Chapter I; Mr. Knightley speaking · English original, 1815 · excerpt
The comic distinction is exact: offer hospitality without taking over the guest’s life. The historical spelling is retained.
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
Henry David Thoreau · Walden · Visitors; the three chairs · excerpt
Thoreau's three chairs make different degrees of company imaginable; a welcome need not abolish solitude.
You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give.
Henry David Thoreau · Walden · Visitors; the performance of hosting · excerpt
A useful invitation need not be an impressive performance of hosting.
We are not strangers, we are neighbors, and you needn’t think you’d be a bother.
Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Chapter 5, Being Neighborly; Jo to Laurie · excerpt
Jo answers Laurie's fear of being a bother with a neighborly invitation; her later advice is not a requirement to socialize.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Choose a catalog program in its fixed sequence, or create My Virtues with your own selection and order before starting. Reading and trying the exercises never requires an account.