Know Thy Neighbor

You can be a good neighbor only if you have good neighbors. -Howard E. Koch 

Love thy neighbor. pic.twitter.com/kkM9gz6N9l

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) November 24, 2015

A question was presented to the listeners of a popular radio station recently: Is it important to know your neighbors in this day and age? Do you know your neighbors? I've taken the liberty to looking at both sides of this coin, and if you know me well enough, you know which road we ended up travelling. The advantages and disadvantages of knowing your neighbors can make all of the difference - and even impact your lifestyle. 

The advantages of knowing your neighbors are the need to know the types of people around you; which families have children of a similar age to your own that they can play with; serves as a lookout; camaraderie; a sense of belonging; and being acutely aware of events, a "secret society" feel. Knowing the neighbors means that you get a pretty decent idea of the character types; if the people across the street are meticulous with yard work, they can serve as an unspoken peer pressure for you to keep up the lawn and protect property values. On the contrary, they could simply park their cars all over the grass and throw their trash everywhere as if the world is their private landfill. For families, the assurance that their children can make friends without having to drive across town to the park or the Boys & Girls Club means that they could have a place to crash after school until a parent picks them up. The kids may even become best friends based on the communities they live in! Another advantage of knowing the neighbors is serving as a lookout for suspicious activities throughout the neighborhood. If you're on vacation, you want to know that someone is looking out for your home while you are away and everything is safe and sound upon returning. No one wants to come home after a relaxing week at the beach to a ransacked house because no one bothered to remain vigilant while you were out. The next advantages are camaraderie and a sense of belonging. Life is so much better when you get along with the people next door or across the street in that you're more apt to carry on a conversation and share life events with them such as block parties, births, and shared yard sales. You take pride being a part of the community because you have skin in others' lives. The final advantage of knowing your neighbors is being acutely aware of events and the local gossip, a "secret society" feel. You know who is crazy, who the party animals at the end of the cul de sac are, and where the kids who TP'd your oak tree live. 

However, some people think it is unimportant to know the neighbors. Common reasons are we do not have time for other people at the end of the work day; all they are doing is waving from the lawn; welfare concerns; physically look different from the rest of the neighborhood; that life seems outdated; and this is what social media is for. In our fast-paced lives, the last thing we want to do is have to deal with someone making an impromptu - and sometimes inappropriate - visit. After a long day at work, the couch is the place to be, not conversing with the woman next door about her petunias and how the world is changing for the worse daily. Waving at the folks who pass by your house may seem harmless, but maybe you just aren't particularly outgoing. Their friendliness comes across to you as fake, yet it makes you feel like you've landed into a scene from Pleasantville where everyone is overly polite in their own little world. The third reason to take pause in getting to know the neighbors is for welfare concerns. Every town has sketchy people, and if you haven't met them, keep living. They may be just a little off, but their eccentricities are enough for you to be put off. For example, the Oompas two doors down only come outside to move their cars or load up to eat at the nearby pizzeria every Tuesday night. They may not be sketchy people after all, but maybe someone saw them scratching their behinds in public before or host Wiccan ceremonies at home. Strange, but I wouldn't call that sketchy; having a rapist next door with my teenage daughters in the bedroom with an easy windowsill to sneak in/out of is an instant cause of concern. Looking physically different from the neighbors is also a reason not to get to know them albeit a silly one. Being the token minorities in a majority neighborhood can be intimidating, and if no one is accepting of you, it is easy to stay inside and keep to yourselves. Again, this is something you would typically pay attention to during the house hunt, but if not, it can cause unneeded worry and additional stress that something evil could happen at this house. The next reason why some people think it is not important to know your neighbors is that taking the time to meet and greet the people nearby seems outdated as if doing so means you are living in a different era. It could also mean that you are remaining guarded because of past treatment from a former neighbor or someone you were close to betrayed you in one way or another. Feelings are important, yet it doesn't mean keep everything bottled up on the inside. Lastly, people think it does not matter if they ever see their neighbors thanks to social media. Most of us are on at least one social site (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+, etc) and for much of the day, we engage ourselves in conversations with our friends and sometimes not even know they live in the same place as you. That sense of community does not matter since I see you online all of the time, so why should I come over to chat with you?

We did get to know the neighbors on both sides of our house as well as the ones across the street and behind us. While we do not constantly hang around each other, I know that they have our backs and vice versa; as for the neighbors behind us, we know where the party is by the number of people standing on their deck. My worries were relieved once we got to know them (hey, none of them are sketchy!) and after four months, we feel like we fit right on in with the rest of the subdivision. Your decision to introduce yourselves to the neighbors is completely up to know; I just have to know who the people that live next door to me are and what kinds of people they are.