While I am always on the lookout to make some kind of commentary about my neighbors when the opportunity presents itself [1] [2], in general I suppose I am a relatively normal sort of neighbor for these atomistic and anonymous times, someone who generally minds his own business and keeps to his own affairs, and while I am civil and polite to those around I am not necessarily warmly friendly or apt to be involved in the affairs of others unless I have a very strong reason to do so. Far from feeling happy about the need to involve myself in the affairs of others, often I do it with a great sense of unease and concern about not overstepping boundaries, as well as concerns over the often mixed motives involved in such acts of interference and involvement, both my own and those of others.

This evening as I was quietly reading a book about Augustus (review pending) in the living room and listening to my Pandora station, I got the second knock on the door of the day. The first knock on the door had been from the mail carrier who was delivering a package. The second knock on the door of the day was from my new next-door neighbor Chuck, who apparently has a lot of concerns about the theft of his equipment by other people involved in the janitorial field as well as a long-time presence in this particular quiet neighborhood that makes him more willing to get to know others around him than most people would show. I have waved at some of the more friendly neighbors, but not talked to them, as I tend not to be very aggressive in getting to know people without seeing some sort of sign of friendliness and willingness to engage.

One of the concerns this neighbor brought to my attention was something that I had not pondered before but that I figured was worth thinking about at least a little as it related to the problem of the love we should have for our neighbor and our tendency to live in isolation from those around us. The owner of the particular house that I now live in has a property manager taking care of the property, and is concerned about her profits, which she depends on for her livelihood, being eaten up by repairs such as blinds or plumbing problems [3]. However, she is concerned about getting in trouble with her own contracts if she takes too active a role in the property that she owns, so she is in contact with our neighbor, who can be trusted to work as a go-between and ensure that we have no desire to eat up her profits in endless requests for repairs. Basically, he was sounding us out to see what sort of people we were, hopefully finding us to be decent sort of people, neither disposed to be meddlers nor sullen troublemakers, but peaceful and polite sort of folks. At least, that is what I hope he saw.

I would like to think of myself as the sort of person who is generally loving and kind in my interactions with others, albeit someone who is often torn between my own fears of entanglement and stoic reserve and my longings for close relationships with others. While it is easier to be polite to those one happens to come across in the course of one’s life, gracious and thoughtful as the circumstance arises, it is a vastly more nerve-wracking matter for me to be intimately involved in the affairs of others, as this usually means (out of simple reciprocity) that I must make them equally intimately involved in my own concerns, something that I tend to find really alarming and unpleasant to wrestle with. Sometimes the worst fears are not fears of rejection, but rather fears of acceptance, and the complications that are involved with wrestling between seemingly contradictory obligations of duty and love and kindness to others as well as the desire to fulfill one’s own legitimate longings and aims. Having had little experience in well-functioning institutions and communities, and being a person who has spent a great deal of my life in some sort of social isolation, I find such matters to be extremely stressful, even if they may end up immensely rewarding someday. Being conscientious about the well-being of others is not always a recipe for peace of mind, even if it does at least mean that one’s actions will be done with the desire to help others and not only help oneself.

It is easy to see that the ungodly pietism that is so common in our world has done us no favors in being good neighbors. We are commanded to love others as ourselves, and we all know our own longings, our own needs and concerns, and the frustrations we face in a world that seems at best indifferent and all too often hostile to our well-being and success. In desiring not to meddle with others or be busybodies, or expose too much of ourselves to the ridicule and abuse of others (and, to be honest, many of us have experienced far too much of both), all too often we have cut ourselves off from people who would be genuinely supportive and encouraging and understanding. Finding good neighbors and developing the right amount of openness as well as caution and discretion is a difficult task, one that I attempt earnestly, but not always successfully. Hopefully, with time and practice, we can all begin to better master the difficult task of being a good neighbor without being a meddler.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/tired-of-being-afraid/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/you-could-do-so-much-better-than-this/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/where-the-water-flows/