Suggestion Box: It’s Time We Rebuild Our Sense Of Community

Dear neighbors,

I would like to get to know you. It doesn’t have to be anything incredibly personal. Hell, we don’t even have to be friends, but friendly would be good. At the very least, I’d like to feel like we can say hi to each other as we wheel our trash cans to and from the street.

My brother and I were talking about this the other day. He put on an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show and about halfway in he turns to me and says, “It would be great to live in this time. There’s one little main street and everyone knows their neighbor.” I thought about it for a minute and said, “Well, you can meet your neighbors now.” The next thing he said, although I know he’s joking, put into essence what I think a lot of us feel, especially when confronted with the idea of socializing with neighbors.

“I don’t like people.”

I know the statement he made wasn’t entirely true, but here’s the deal. Too many of us today are like this. We’d rather stay in our comfortable, isolated bubbles of houses rather than open up our doors to the ones we see on a regular basis. In America, we pride ourselves on the houses we can build and the stuff we can fill them up with, but we don’t seem to put much stock in the relationships we can build with those around us. It’s kind of sad.

I suggest we stop isolating ourselves and our families and instead get to know each other. Let’s live in a place of love and understanding, rather than fear and uncertainty. It’s easy to be scared of people when we don’t get out and meet any of them. It’s much harder to face that fear and actually say hello.

Another thing that further isolates us is the fact that most of us do not live with extended families. Many cultures around the world have grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all living in the same house as moms, dads, brothers and sisters. But our culture says that each family unit must consist of two parents and immediate children, and that that family unit must live in its own abode. If you want to see Grandma and Grandpa, you go to their individual family housing unit. If you want to see Aunt Jill or Uncle Khasif, you go to their family housing unit. If your parents are divorced, you have two individual housing units on top of that then, too.

It’s no wonder so many people feel so alone and depressed these days. We feel like no one is home, but in reality, we don’t even ring the doorbell to find out.

Humans are social creatures, even us introverts. We need each other to survive; it’s been hard wired into our brains since the days of hunter-gathering. But we’ve gone further away from that with each passing generation. Houses are getting bigger, which is now making the gaps among families who live together that much greater. Kids get their own rooms and bathrooms, parents spend more time in their “man cave” or “she shed,” and no one ever gets together in a place called the “family room.”

But there is a solution to all of this. And all it takes is lending a hand.

When I first moved into my apartment in Oakland, California, I had trouble fitting my couch into the elevator to get it to my fourth floor apartment. Two complete strangers who lived in the building saw me struggle and decided to help me. Two hours they spent with me trying to maneuver this couch unsuccessfully through one elevator, unsuccessfully through another elevator, and then unsuccessfully up the stairs. We never did get that couch to my apartment, but we ended up becoming friends, or at least friendly to each other from that day on. I will never forget the generosity and kindness of those two people, and I will never forget their names (thanks Zach and Amanda!).

So if we want to live in a world where we know our neighbors, and people are nicer to each other, we need to take the first step, or more accurately, be the first to reach out a hand. It’s through this action that we’ll be able to see human kindness and receive a better sense of community.

Just a suggestion…