Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Very recently, someone in my life got a new used car.  An older car.  It doesn’t have any bells and whistles; there is no A/C, it has hand-cranked windows, it is loud, it bounces around in every bump in the road and I love it.  You should know that he got the car because his personal belief is that too many people get into their cars and they forget that it is a machine.  They stop connecting to the fact that they are doing something unnatural.  They get into these boxes, drive 80mph, with heated seats, DVD’s playing, listening to their choice of radio station pumped in via satellite.  They have lost sense of reality.

He got the car so that he could remember that he is in a machine.  A machine that could kill him or another person, so it forces you to obey the speed limit.  A machine where you are present to the weather, either because you are cold or hot, so you understand what is happening on this planet.  A machine that, by the nature of the type of machine it is, is not always the convenient choice, so it often times is not used and instead walking or biking is.  Every time we talked about it, even if I have no inclination of changing my car for something more.. rustic… I completely understand his position and agree with it.

The reason why is because I participate in my version of the same discussion.

I live in a townhouse.  My building contains six units and each of us has two stories.  The neighbors on one side also have six two story units and the other side is also a two story building with 12 units.  There are houses behind me.  There is a 24 unit apartment complex directly across the street.  I live on a very busy street which I just learned is zoned as a “secondary highway”.

I live with the windows and doors open as often as possible.

This is my version on the new used car.  Although, to be fair, I didn’t set out to live this way as a test.  I grew up in a house built in 1926.  We did not have air conditioning my entire childhood (my family did install it within the last year).  Whether it was where or when I grew up, the house was wide open all the time.  In the summer, we had nights where we were hiding from dive bombing june bugs while trying to sleep.  If a skunk sprayed it was swelter in the house without any draft or suck it up and learn to live with the smell.  This also allows you to wake up to the sound of birds greeting the day and hear the crickets sing you a lullaby to sleep.

So when it came to living on my own, before I would turn on the AC, I open every window and door in my house.

What this has done is similar to my friend with the car.  I hear everything.  I hear my neighbors incessant dog barking the night away.  I hear the kids behind me having tantrums.  Not to mention, the house that I suspect is occupied by drug dealers.  One neighbor does not turn his morning alarm off for no less than 45 minutes.  Beep, beep, beep for 45 minutes at 630am!  Another neighbor BBQ’s no matter what time of year.. and I am vegan so this presents its own problems.

But if I am really honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Why?

Because each and everyday, I am reminded that I am part of a community.  This is a neighborhood.  There are people who live around me.  Neighbors that I have to make compromises with and ask them to do the same.

This is what it takes to be a human being living in a metropolis.

This is very different than most of the others who live around me.  Those who hermetically seal themselves in their homes behind locked doors and windows for all intents and purposes, preserving themselves in unnatural frigid temperatures.

These are the people that end up being extremely entitled at the Starbucks yelling at the barrista for not giving them the right amount of cinnamon on their latte.  These are the people that speed down a street that is posted at 25mph but they can’t be late so they go 70mph.  To put it simply these are the people that forgot how to negotiate with the others around them thereby creating a harmonious place to live instead of one where we are all out for ourselves.

I know this may seem ridiculous to some of you.  How could keeping your window do all this?  But, I truly think that it does.  I think that when you shut yourself off from your community by the physical act of shutting a window, you are that much more willing to do it psychologically.

So thank you to the man who got a used car so you could remember what it is like to be in a machine.  That simple act helped me remember that I live in a neighborhood.. with a lot of people…and I like it!