Love Thy Neighbor

Franklin Farm is what I call home

How many people know their neighbors? I have lived at the same house for over twenty years. I have had the same next-door neighbors, the same neighbors directly across the street, the same neighbors diagonal  and three other families that live in a pipestem across the street from me the whole time I've lived at my house. I know my neighbors across the street pretty well. The mom used to get mad at me because I would ride my bike around the neighborhood and cross the street without looking both ways; her sons, 
who are much older than me, used to play basketball with me every so often. My neighbors next door have never really gotten along with me because I used to hit their house (accidentally) with soccer balls, baseballs, lacrosse balls and so on. My parents sometimes talk to the neighbors diagonal from us when they see each other. I know one of the families that lives in the pipestem because one daughter and I are the same age and I would play with her little brother often. The family next to them, we don't know and the other family, my parents know a little bit.



You would think with all this time we've spent living close to one another, we would have at least had dinner together once but nope, never. My neighborhood is huge, there are probably 700-800 houses in it. I've known pretty much every kid that ever lived in it. I'm happy that people who bought houses in my neighborhood didn't buy, flip and sell; they raised their kids in it. The problem is that I don't really know my neighbors outside of the ones whose kids I knew. I have no clue what my neighbors three houses down even look like!

We live in a time where we are more-connected with people who live on another continent than we are with our own neighbors, this is a problem! There are so many benefits to knowing your neighbors, I don't need to go into this. Whenever I buy my own house, my goal is to know every single one of my neighbors. I want to invite them all over for dinner at different times so I can get to know them all. I want that sense of community back.

A century ago, people knew their neighbors well, what happened to this? Are we meant to only talk to people via phone and social-media and then always drive to socialize? This seems like a wretched lifestyle to me. I want to know the old married couple whose kids live four hours away, I want to know the Tibetan family living two streets over, I want to know the Catholic family living at the end of the street; I want to familiarize myself with them all in order to form a bond and enhance the community.

How can we try to learn about other cultures in other countries when we don't even know the culture in our own backyard? (literally)