52 Weeks of Neighboring - Week 33

Neighboring Tip of the Week - Mow a neighbor’s yard or ask a neighbor to mow yours AND learn something new about them.

Happy fall, all!

Now that temperatures are starting to cool, grasses are growing a little faster again. So, for this week’s tip, we challenge you to either mow a neighbor’s yard or ask a neighbor to mow yours AND learn something new about them.

With this week’s tip, you have two options. The first option is to mow a neighbor’s yard. Obviously, this is a kind gesture, so if you would like to mow a neighbor’s yard, we would definitely encourage you to do so! Perhaps you have a neighbor who is currently unable to mow their yard due to being out of town or sick, and you can mow for them? If you choose to mow your neighbor’s yard, we encourage you to make it clear to them that you are not desiring any sort of payment in return; you simply want to mow their yard for them because you are their neighbor! The second option is to ask a neighbor to mow your yard. While at first glance, the first option might seem like the harder of the two, we have actually found that this second option is often more difficult. Asking a neighbor for help is very counter-cultural, as it involves admitting to them that you have needs. But here’s the thing: your neighbor has needs, too! And it might sound crazy, but we think being willing to share your needs with your neighbors will actually help you to build trust and foster relationships with them!

The second part of this tip is key. We do challenge you to either mow a neighbor’s yard or ask a neighbor to mow yours, but regardless of which option you choose, we ALSO challenge you to learn something new about them. We think this will help you to have conversations with your neighbor in which they can talk about things they care about, and these conversations are a huge part of moving past purely service-related interactions. We think the danger in providing services is that it becomes all too easy for the interactions to remain one-way, with one party continually providing services and the other continually receiving the services. Instead, we encourage you to foster relationships with your neighbors. Relationships contain two-way interactions with both give and take, and they also produce much more than simply an exchange of services. From a scientific standpoint, humans are quite literally healthier when engaged in relationships, but furthermore, we believe relationships lead to genuine friendships, bring forth joy in all of our lives, and make the world a better place.

Happy neighboring!