52 Weeks of Neighboring - Week 48

Neighboring Tip of the Week - Look for, and be inspired by, examples of good neighboring.

Greetings neighbors, near and far!

At the Neighboring Movement, one of the things we like to say is that neighboring comes alive in the stories. What do we mean by that? Well, we know all kinds of reasons why neighboring is good and healthy for our communities, and we talk about them all the time, but often, we find that the best way to talk about neighboring is not through theory but through stories. By telling actual stories about actual people whose lives were significantly impacted by their actual neighbors! Crazy, right? We often present to people all kinds of reasons why they should neighbor, but sometimes, it just doesn’t seem to click until we tell the story of how one of our neighbors invited us over for a home-cooked Christmas dinner because she knew we didn’t have any other plans, or the one of how our neighbors gathered together to remember and share stories about one of our neighbors who had passed on, or the one about our neighbor who gave a beautiful gift to the family of our neighbor who passed on...you get the point. And the crazy thing is, we would not have experienced these beautiful moments if we didn’t know our neighbors! Each of these moments has impacted our lives in tangible ways, and telling the story of each one is heartwarming and meaningful for us. In addition to this, we believe that telling these stories inspires others to be good neighbors, too! Who wouldn’t want to experience such beautiful moments?!

In light of all of this, this week’s neighboring tip is: Look for, and be inspired by, examples of good neighboring. Perhaps this looks like paying attention to how the neighbors on your block interact with you and your other neighbors, or perhaps this looks like Googling “stories of good neighboring”. Over the holidays, we read this incredible story on NPR. How could we not be inspired?! However this looks for you, we encourage you to seek out examples of people being good neighbors, and we hope this is inspiring!

Getting to know our neighbors is profoundly impacting our neighborhood and who we are as individuals - not to mention, it’s bringing us so much joy in the process! Along with this, we believe that neighbors in other communities are experiencing these profound impacts and this great joy, as well. What better way for all of us to continue inspiring one another to be good neighbors than by sharing these stories?

Happy neighboring!