Life & Therapy

When I was in college, I shared a house with roommates, some of us a bit crunchy and wacky, on a street where we were the only college students. The man across the street from us sent a clear message that he did not want us there, from the moment we moved in. He posted a ridiculous amount of “No Trespassing” signs all over his property. The only time he spoke to me in the two years that we were neighbors was when he felt I was trespassing and he angrily told me to get off of his property. We could all feel his hostility. We all made jokes about him and his signs and I felt strong urges to rebel against them.

One morning, I was feeling extremely low: I had just injured myself the night before and was hobbling out the door on crutches. The first thing I saw as I left the house was that neighbor, who was furiously posting even more “No Trespassing” signs. I hobbled past his house near tears, and the next sight I saw was the couple who lived next to the anti-trespassing man. They were a couple in their eighties, and I had not yet met them. I felt them staring at me and I assumed that they were similarly unhappy with us college kids living on their street. I continued to hobble past them when I heard one of them say something to me that I could not hear, so I stopped to ask what he’d said. They wanted to know how I’d hurt myself, and if I needed any help, and they expressed sympathy to me. In that moment, I felt that there was more to our neighborhood than hostility toward our household. I felt more welcome.

Over time, I got to know this couple: he was the town’s former police chief, and she was an avid quilter. He had an incredible rose garden that he nurtured with all of his heart and he often would make bouquets for me. She showed me a quilt that she’d made for him for their fiftieth anniversary from all the ties he’d worn during his career. If these two had not reached out to me over our age, lifestyle, and political differences, I would have never known the welcoming love that was in our very own neighborhood. I would have assumed that we lived in a place that was hostile to our kind. I also felt motivated to be more respectful of this couple who had lived here for so long.

Many years have gone by, and we now live next door to a group of young college kids. They have a small front yard that we can see clearly from many places in our house and yard, and they like to be outside quite a bit. Sometimes they like to do things in their front yard that I don’t want to see from my home, and that I don’t want our children to see, because these neighbors are not terribly shy about their bodies or how they share their bodies with each other. I talked to their landlord to let her know that we will be building a taller fence, because this seems to be the solution to the privacy issue. I realized this morning that I haven’t talked to any of the people living there and that if I don’t, this fence could make them feel as unwelcome in their home as I felt with the “No Trespassing” signs that were aimed at us. I did something just now that I am out of practice with: I walked over and talked to one of them. I let her know that we are building a fence so that we and they can have privacy and that I wanted her to understand that we weren’t building a “Fuck You” fence. She understood and we talked a little more and now I know these people much younger than me and different from me a little bit more, and I hope that they feel more welcome in our neighborhood.

We all can easily have a positive impact on people who are not just like us, and we can allow them to have a positive impact on us. I mentioned that I am out of practice with talking to the neighbors. To be more clear, I am out of practice with talking to the neighbors and strangers that are different from me. I have gotten lazy about it, and a large part of this laziness comes from my habits on social media. I can have conversations all day long with like-minded people of about the same age as me and political leanings as mine when I am on Facebook. I can unfriend or hide the feeds of people who are not like-minded. This is fine to do if I am needing a place to go that is my happy place, but it should not be a substitute for interacting with the diverse real people of the world. When we don’t even look at each other because we’re afraid, or lost in our phones, or just out of the habit of talking to people who are not like us, we increase feelings of isolation and insulation for ourselves and others. If someone is different than me, it is easy to silence them on social media, or tune them out, or rage at them or about them in a way that I might not if we were face-to-face. I feel strongly that it is time for me to spend less time on screens and more time making eye contact with and talking to neighbors and strangers, not just the ones that look like me or act like me, and especially the ones who might feel the least welcome where I feel the most welcome.