book1 unit1 after-class reading 1 : Love Thy Neighbor

It seems to me that neighbors are going out of style in America. The friend next door from whom you borrowed four eggs or a ladder has moved, and the people in there now are strangers.


Some of the old ideas about neighbors are probably silly, and it may be just as well that our relations with our neighbors are changing. The religious teaching to "Love Thy Neighbor" was probably a poor translation of what must have originally been "Respect Thy Neighbor". Love doesn't exist just because we want it to.


Fewer than half the people in the United States live in the same house they lived in five years ago, so there's no reason to love the people who live next door to you just because they happened to buy a house next door to yours.  The only thing neighbors have in common to begin with is being close, and unless something more develops, that isn't reason enough to be best friends. It sometimes happens, but the chances are very small that your neighbors will be your choice as friends. Or that you will be theirs, either.


The best relationship with neighbors is one of friendly distance. You say hello, you sometimes talk if you see them in the yard, you discuss problems and you help each other when help is needed. The bushes or the fence between you is not a cold shoulder, but a clear boundary. We all like clearly defined boundaries for ourselves.


If neighbors have changed, neighborhoods have not. They still have the same parts. If you live in a real neighborhood you can be sure most of the following people will be found there:


—— One family with more children than they can take care of.
—— A dog that gets into garbage cans.
—— One big, beautiful home with a family so rich that they really aren't part of the neighborhood.
—— A bad child who steals or sets fire to things, although no one has ever been able to prove it.
—— People who leave their Christmas lights up until March.
—— Someone who doesn't cut their grass more than twice a summer.
—— Someone who cuts their grass twice a week and one of the times always seems to be Sunday morning at 7:30.
—— A family that never seems to turn off any lights in the house,
—— A teenager who plays the radio too loud in the summer with the windows open.
—— Someone who leaves their barking dog out until 11:30 most nights.
—— One mystery couple. They come and go but hardly anyone ever sees them and no one knows what they do.
—— A couple that has loud parties all the time with guests that take an hour to leave once they get outside and start shouting good-bye to each other.
—— Someone who doesn't pull the shades.


It is easier to have a longing about a past neighborhood than about a past community, but a community is probably a better unit. A neighborhood is just a group of people who live close together, but a community is a group of people who put aside their own concerns to get some important things done for a larger group.


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aside
bark
boundary
community
concern
define
exist
garbage
longing
mystery
neighborhood
originally
relationship
religious
style
teaching
teenager
thy
translation


have ... in common (with someone or something)
out of style
set fire to something / set something on fire