“Borrow trouble for yourself, if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbors.” ~ Rudyard Kipling
From Mr. Rogers to Veggie Tales to Sesame Street, a significant chunk of children’s programming for the last 50 years has been dedicated to educating our little ones about how to identify and define (and treat) neighbors. It’s a lesson we seem inclined to forget when we get old enough to have real neighbors of our own.
Sit in on enough public meetings and you’ll eventually hear someone griping about their neighbors, often with good reason — their neighbors have forgotten to be considerate of them, or they are being inconsiderate of their neighbors.
It’s a touchy subject in our libertarian-leaning society. If you’ve invested several hundred thousand dollars on a house and property, you feel justified to do whatever you want on that land. It’s yours, after all, and this is a free country. That’s a fair argument, to a point. It’s also a fair argument that some folks are obnoxious control freaks or inconsiderate slobs.
What is perhaps of greater consequence is that having neighbors is kind of like having siblings: you’re stuck with them, so you might as well make the best of it. Sure, they do things that irritate you, and you hate the color they painted their garage, and you really wish they’d mow their weeds and get rid of that illegal rooster, but at the end of the day, they’re still your neighbor. That should trigger some kind of care and concern, as you hope they have for you.
Depending on where you live, your definition of neighbor may differ. In rural areas the distance between neighbors can stretch to miles, while in town or an urban setting it might be limited to the people on your block or all the people in your apartment complex. Bring it into a New Testament Biblical context and we’re instructed to consider everyone as a neighbor… someone to be kind to, considerate of, helpful, supportive, and generous with.
Maybe all those children’s shows were onto something. Maybe the neighborhood really is where we practice being decent humans.
Not perfect. Not always agreeable. But decent.
Because at the end of the day, long after the zoning debates and paint colors and poultry disputes are settled, what remains is this: we live here together. And that’s reason enough to treat each other like we plan to stay awhile.