Embracing My Role As Jake From State Farm
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Two years ago I dressed up in khakis and a red polo shirt to be “Jake from State Farm” for Halloween. It was fun, particularly because before and after that Halloween, “Jake from State Farm” was a common nickname or comment that would come up when meeting people or in general conversation.
So when I say I’m embracing my role as “Jake from State Farm”, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be wearing khakis more. It means that I’m working on being a better neighbor. Remember? That’s the other part of those State Farm commercials. The jingle goes: “like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”
Maybe this story just became significantly less interesting now that you know I’m not promising to only wear khakis or starting a job at State Farm. Trust me though, there’s reason to keep reading.
You’ll get to hear about my adventures asking strangers on an airplane to help me with a fun project, my trip to the Dominican Republic, and how I’ve changed how I go grocery shopping. You’ll also get to hear about me asking myself and attempting to answer some big questions about who I am and how I move through this world — questions you can (and probably should) think about for yourself too.
This desire and this idea of being a good neighbor comes, as you might’ve guessed, from a spiritual context. Jesus said that the second most important commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. Maybe you’ve heard this before? Maybe you’ve even heard it too much so that you’ve become deaf to it.
I think a lot of people have. I was to some extent, and for those that haven’t heard this exact verse before, you have likely heard some non-religious version of it: “treat others how you want to be treated,” “spread love, not hate,”…you get the idea.
Part of the reason I think I had become unconcerned with being a good neighbor is because I thought I already was one. I was a nice person. I tried to do good in the world by helping people and being empathetic to larger social issues. In fact, if polled, people who have known me or been around me these last few years might argue that I was a good neighbor.
Yes, those things I described are part of being a good neighbor, but it’s more than that. First, I think being a good neighbor involves making a conscious choice…over and over again.
Here’s a story about that. It happened just before I left for the airport the Saturday morning of spring break. I was 15 steps outside of St. Mary with my luggage in hand to head to our Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip leader’s house where my group was all meeting.
A man walking the opposite way as me stopped to ask where the university bookstore was, explaining he was looking for a book about St. Ignatius of Loyola. I didn’t think the university bookstores would have any books about St. Ignatius, so I pointed toward some of the other independent bookstores downtown instead.
(Quick background: St. Ignatius of Loyola lived in the 1500s and was the founder of the Jesuits, a religious order within Catholicism. The Jesuits are best well-known today for running high schools and universities, such as Gonzaga University, Xavier U., oh, and Loyola-Chicago. They also run Catholic parishes though. St. Mary at the University of Michigan is one of those parishes.)
In that moment I had a choice. I could go on and make my way to where I needed to be, leaving this man to his own devices, or I could engage with him and tell him that what he might be looking for could be right in front of him.
I pointed to St. Mary and told him this is the campus parish run by Jesuits where I work. We ended up talking the next 15 minutes as we walked together to my destination.
Apparently, Matthew, the man, is a management consultant from Boston. He had a super long layover at the airport, so he got on a bus outside the terminal and the bus was going to Ann Arbor. He didn’t know anyone in town, but he was ready to explore. He was looking for the book because he had recently became inspired by St. Ignatius after going on a Jesuit silent retreat with a Catholic friend. It was a gift of an encounter.
We face small choices like these several times everyday. How often do we choose to engage? How often do we choose the option that will grow our hearts and open up new possibilities?
This still doesn’t fully capture being a good neighbor though. Second, I think it involves going against a lot of how our modern culture tells us to behave.
Here’s a story about that. A few months ago I discovered this video about this thing called the Passenger Project (it’s a 2-min video…worth the watch).
Basically, this guy started this project for anytime he has a flight where he’ll pass around a clipboard and piece of paper with some kind of fun, interesting prompt, asking his fellow passengers to contribute to it and pass it to the next person. At the end, the clipboard returns to him with these little works of art. It bucks the status quo of our culture today when we normally spend flights either reading, sleeping, or using our smartphone or tablet. We rarely talk with each other or get to know anyone else on the plane. The Passenger Project disrupts that. It asks us to interact with each other, to contribute to something as a collective, and to find beauty in the unlikely places, like the middle seat of a cramped plane.
The Passenger Project says forget what the culture tells us, we can and should be neighborly again in the places where all we have is each other. How can you not love this? As soon as I saw that video, I was sold. I’m doing this on my next flight.
My multiple flights for getting to the Dominican Republic was my first chance to try it. It did not go as well as expected. On this first attempt from Philly to Miami, the older man next to me didn’t want to participate or pass the clipboard. The two people behind me didn’t speak English or Spanish, and the younger guy in front of me simply said, “no thanks.”
I was crushed. Why wouldn’t people buy in? Was it the wording I was using to ask? Was the prompt: “draw what love means to you” too big of a question to think about? This was a good lesson for me and obvious when I took a second to reflect on it. Whenever we’re going against the cultural norm, there will be people who don’t want to support or even who fight against us. There will be rejection, cold shoulders and icy glares.
With the encouragement of one of the people in my group, I tried the Passenger Project on our next flight from Miami to Santo Domingo, and it worked. A couple dozen people filled in the blank to the statement: “My hopelessly ambitious dream is to __________.”
Some of my favorite responses were “…for my son to sign in baseball,” and “…own a bakery with all my grandma’s recipes,” and “…live with family in Alaska for one year.”
How beautiful.
Again, there’s still more to being a good neighbor than what I’ve shared so far. Third, I think it involves wasting time with one another.
Here’s a story about that. Traveling to the Dominican was my first time out of the country, besides Canada. With that, of course, comes tremendous learning and a fresh perspective on life in the U.S.
One of the things that struck me most in the Dominican is that there seems to be no such thing as “wasting time.” Yes, people and events tend to move slower and there’s less concern for being late compared to our regimented American schedules, but that’s not quite what I’m referring to. Everywhere we walked and drove past in the rural areas of the country, whether it was 9am in the morning or 9pm at night, I always saw the Dominican people standing, sitting, or playing outside their homes, almost always in the company of friends and neighbors.
On a couple occasions, we would be driving somewhere and I’d see families and neighbors sitting in a group conversing. Then, hours later when we taking the same road back the opposite way, I’d see the same group of people still out there, just enjoying each other’s presences.
What a sight. Seeing this connected another dot for me. One day when we were at pop-up health clinic, we were gathering basic info — name, age, weight — from the children who had been brought to the clinic by a parent or adult neighbor. There were several times when we asked the accompanying adult the name and age of a particular child, and instead of that adult answering, another slightly older kid who just happened to be standing nearby would be able to answer quicker and more accurately, including down to the very months of the age. We were floored. Really?! How does he know that about this child? The only explanation we would receive was: “Oh, they’re from the same community. They all know each other.” Huh. How enriching.
The Dominicans just “waste time” with each other, including their physical neighbors. I say this from a place of admiration, not judgment. What, in the U.S., we see as “wasting time”, seems to translate to “being neighborly” in the Dominican.
Fourth, it involves being willing to share all that we have.
Nothing is mine. It is all ours. I observed this sentiment in a young Dominican boy named Juan Luis.
Juan Luis might be 8- or 9-years-old…I’m not sure. When he was younger, he was taken care of for awhile by the organization we were working with on this trip, Building Bridges of Hope (BBOH). This was at a time when he was severely malnourished. Eventually, BBOH got him back to a good place in his health and returned him to his family. He has been doing well and has been with his family since.
I was fortunate to get to meet Juan Luis and his friend named Ale who had also been taken care of by BBOH. These two boys had dinner with our group and then later went with us for ice cream. From dinner to ice cream and everything in between, Juan Luis was always quick to share whatever he had with Ale, regardless of the fact that Ale had his own serving. This was often without Ale even asking too.
Here this kid was getting ice cream — not something that would happen everyday or even every week for him — and yet, he was willingly giving it away. Who does that? Definitely not me! But someone who understands that it was never “his” ice cream to begin with. Someone who understands that it’s more fun to share. Someone who is okay with having less. Someone who wants to bring a sense of abundance into the world. Someone who is a good neighbor.
Fifth, being a good neighbor involves realizing our most vulnerable neighbors are probably the ones we never see, and that’s a problem because we are all interconnected.
I don’t have a specific story about this one. This was never made explicit to me in the Dominican. It was just a feeling that I had when I was there. It was a feeling that everything I do matters. The things I throw away, the energy I consume, the bananas that I buy. It all matters, and it’s probably coming at someone else’s expense. Someone I might never see. Author Matthew Kelly describes it this way, “there are no personal acts.”
Have you ever had this feeling before? Isn’t it sobering? Even though I might never see them, shouldn’t I try to do right by them? We are all interconnected, so when others suffer, part of me suffers.
I’ve obviously been thinking a lot about this — in particular, since coming back from the Dominican I’ve been asking myself: in what scenarios am I already being a good neighbor? And in what scenarios could I do a little better in?
One of the places where I haven’t been that good of a neighbor is…the grocery store.
I know, it sounds goofy, but it’s true. I hated going to the grocery store. To salvage the experience, I have my headphones in listening to a podcast; my goal is to get in and out as quick as possible, and I always go to the self-checkout.
As I mentioned before, being a good neighbor involves making a conscious choice, but if we’re actually trying to be a good neighbor, the choice is kinda already made for us. It becomes part of our character, our inner DNA. By this, I mean why would we choose to be a good neighbor to some people or in some places, but not others? Are we discriminating or excluding when we make that choice? Then, it’s almost like our exclusiveness stains or diminishes that other good neighboring we’re doing. I know it’s idealistic to suggest we be consciously generous, compassionate, patient, and loving in every encounter all the time, but shouldn’t that be what we’re aiming for?
My aim is to build up to that starting with the grocery store. I’ve started going without headphones, with the goal of smiling at people, making conversation when (not if) opportunities present themselves, and use a checkout lane with a real human being.
Let me tell what happened the first time I did this at Meijer after the Dominican. It started with just smiling as I was shopping. Of course it was a little uncomfortable initially. People might’ve thought I was wacky (going against the culture), but I felt like it was actually making a difference. When I got to my checkout lane, there was a middle-aged woman who was checking out in front of me. Just before I got there, she had dropped a mandarin oranges fruit cup she was hoping to buy. It spilled, and a store clerk was cleaning it up, but she needed to get another fruit cup.
“Where in the store did you find it?” I offered.
“What?” She looked a bit confused.
“Where in the store did you find it? I can go grab one for you…I’d have to wait here anyway.”
“Oh…it was near the produce in the refrigerated section with other fruit.”
I went and got her another fruit cup. She was touched. I think it was a surprise to her that someone would do that. That’s both disappointing and shows the need for “neighborlyness.” After she finished checking out, I began chatting with the cashier. We talked about cooking, how I like learning to cook, but how she does it more out of necessity for her family, and eggplant because there was a great deal on eggplant that day.
Leaving the grocery store, I was over the moon. What an incredible grocery store experience! I kept replaying it over in my mind. This was joy! Not joy like when you do way better than expected on an exam or when your favorite team hits the game-winning buzzer-beater. No, this was the joy of being a good neighbor, a joy rooted in sharing God’s love for us.
All these things that I’ve described about being a good neighbor are things that Jesus did during his public ministry. How many times was Jesus trying to go to rest or trying to avoid a crowd, when someone would approach him seeking healing? Each time he was moved with compassion and made the conscious choice to engage with the person. Jesus constantly defied the culture of his time, whether it was his disciples not fasting when the law said they should be or his disregarding the barriers between people of different national origins. Jesus was “wasting time” (i.e. spending time) with people almost all the time — his disciples, the poor, and marginalized (tax collectors, sinners, etc.).
What an example for us. Do we need to do every single thing that Jesus did? No, but there are things that he did that would benefit us and others if we did them (the five bolded points I went through above).
The main point here is that being a good neighbor is significant. It might seem like I have it “all figured out”, but I don’t. I’m still really struggling with this because I know it has to change how we see the world and how we act. Can we really claim to be “Christian” or say “we’re seeking to make a positive impact” if we aren’t moved to change, to do better, to be a good neighbor?
It’s hard, it’s going to stretch us, it’s going to take time and lots of mess-ups, and make us uncomfortable, but I don’t see any other way. Forget the red polo and khakis. Being a good neighbor isn’t exclusive to Jake From State Farm.
Who’s with me?
Who wants to be my neighbor?
