As I was cleaning out and looking through the files on my laptop, I came across all the essays I had written for my English college class. Coincidentally enough, most of the essays are written about topics that I already had plans to shed some light on in my blog.
I decided to freshen up my essays and dedicate an article to each of them because I still think that what I wrote three years ago is pretty relevant. This one is especially worth sharing because of the recent tragedies that have occurred. Overall, any horrific event needs to be talked about and I believe that this essay may help people see these tragedies from a different perspective.
For a young child, the most repeated lesson taught by adult figures is to stay away from strangers. If a stranger approaches a child, the child is trained to either run towards the person they are most familiar with or ignore the stranger attempting to get their attention. Children are taught this lesson solely for the purpose of keeping them safe. The “stranger danger” lesson does seem effective and helpful; however, it is actually one of the reasons why people have become distant from one another.
From reading the essay “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” by Peter Lovenheim, I learned that befriending a stranger is actually more beneficial than the “stranger danger” method. Peter Lovenheim had conducted his own experiment in which he went around asking his neighbors if he could stay a few nights at their homes in order to learn more about them. At the beginning of his experiment, the popular answer from his neighbors was a quick “no.”
But later on, out of the 18 neighbors that he asked, once they heard about the great experience that he had with his next-door neighbor Lou, more than half said “yes”.
The fact that the popular answer from his neighbors was a quick “no” was not a surprise to me since most people don’t even know the names of their own next door neighbors. You could put the blame on the simple and inevitable human nature. The feeling of comfort and familiarity with places and people is one trait humans have that is very difficult to change.
Staying within your home with people you are familiar with is more comfortable than going outside and meeting your next-door neighbor. Once people have grown up with others they know, like parents and siblings, thoughts of being rejected or alienated rarely come to mind. However, when asked to go out and meet a stranger who lives next door, those thoughts of alienation and rejection do come to mind, and meeting the next-door neighbor becomes an uncomfortable situation that the majority of people choose to avoid.
If you do know your next-door neighbors on a friendly level it is most likely because you have been living next to them for a good amount of time and befriended them long before social media and any form of propaganda had the power that it has today.
Whenever a tragic event happens, it’s immediately published all over the media. You see it all over the internet and the news. A lot of people will see these horrific images and will react out of fear, pushing away outsiders even further to make sure that their family and home are safe.
In Lovenheim’s essay, he writes about the murder of a woman in his neighborhood. His neighbor had shot his own wife and then himself, leaving their two children behind. That man and woman were living on his street for seven years and Lovenheim hardly knew them. Maybe if he had introduced himself and befriended them prior to that night, they might still be there.
Regardless of human instinct and the fear of letting a stranger into your home, people just have a hard time getting along with others who have a different point of view. No matter what changes are made to help unite people, a separation will always exist. But, when it comes to a neighborhood, the only way that a neighborhood can be a safe environment is if the neighbors know each other and come to some friendly terms. The more you get to know those strangers living around you, the better.
The past tragedies that have occurred in this country, one being the shooting in Lovenheim’s neighborhood, should be an inspiration to meet neighbors in order to have an idea of who they are and, of course, to know if they are safe people to live near to. Not only will getting to know who lives next door benefit one’s own curiosities, becoming familiar with a neighbor can also serve as a help to that neighbor as well, and, in the end, may even lead to the beginning of a new friendship.
