When I was growing up, I ran around with all the other kids in my neighborhood. We knew each other’s families and we also knew the neighbors who didn’t have kids and the entire community helped keep an eye on us, kept us well fed on cookies, and in general helped raise us. The families of the neighborhood would lend a hand whenever someone needed it. J.R., one of our neighbors would bring his tiller to our house every spring and help us start a large garden. Another neighbor had bought a garage from someone, took it apart wall-by-wall, and had it hauled to his house where the entire neighborhood had pitched in and helped pour a foundation, then reconstruct the building. My treehouse was built by family and neighbors who were reimbursed with beer, camaraderie, and the knowledge that when they needed help with building a treehouse for their kids, we’d be there to help them.
But communities like that seem fewer and further between these days. Now it seems like we’re in too much of a hurry with our own lives to slow down and get to know our neighbors. We all-too-often let ourselves get wrapped up in petty squabbles about who doesn’t clean up after their dog or who spends a small mint to buy the latest Wii games for their kids, rather than who needs a hand building a deck for their family or who could use some help cleaning their rain gutters in the fall.
The ramifications of a shrinking community are serious and potentially fatal to a society. The discussion and support networks that constitute the very fabric of a community bolster the individual’s and by extension the communities’ mental well-being. They also reduce poverty and crime. For example, when a community comes together to assist members who have lost jobs in the midst of a national economic crisis, the entire community benefits by preventing poverty from gaining a foot-hold in the community, which also reduces the likelihood of theft, vandalism, and violent crime.
This past week I had the distinct pleasure of witnessing a community coming together in the face of tragedy, to support and reinforce one another simply out of a respect and concern for other members of the community. My niece was hit and killed by a car while she was out roller-blading in the neighborhood with friends. Immediately the community pulled together and provided much-needed support to my sister and our family. Some brought food, paper plates, napkins, etc, while others simply stayed at the house to keep an eye on things during the chaos and to offer a shoulder to cry on for anyone who needed it. Some people donated money to help pay for expenses, while others donated their organizational skills to make sure that people were shuttled around to where they needed to go and that everyone was fed. A local church provided the location for a large community and family gathering and the preacher helped organize a memorial service that included music and a photo slide show projected onto two large screens. Before the service, the extended family sat down to a large buffet dinner donated by parents of children who were in the high-school color guard with my other niece. Flowers were donated by a teacher at the school where my sister works. The entire funeral and memorial service was made possible by family and the community, only 48 hours after the accident.
I’m afraid this is an exception rather than the rule and the loss of the larger sense of community is part and parcel of the moral decline of America. We need to reinvest in the discussion and support networks in our communities if we’re to have any hope in restoring America’s strong moral identity.
Get Involved
- Introduce yourself to your neighbors
- Start small by organizing a picnic with a neighbor or two
- Support the neighborhood kids and get to know them by buying their girl scout cookies or lemonade from their lemonade stands.
- Pay a local kid to mow your lawn rather than paying some large outfit to come in from outside the community
- Car pool with neighbors
- Offer to run errands for elderly in your neighborhood
- Organize community events around light holidays such as halloween
- Offer assistance to members of the community who have service members i.e. organize going-away parties before they go to basic training or before they deploy to a base far away from home
- Organize or become part of a neighborhood watch program
Learn more
- Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says, The Washington Post, 23 June, 2006
- Report reveals loss of community spirit The Guardian, 16 August, 2006