Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Illustration by The Epoch Times

We live beside a lady who watches our driveway like a hawk with the help of her dogs. No stranger wanders up our property without her letting me know.

Our other neighbors are garden wizards who bless us with jams, veggies and free use of their hot tub. We get eggs delivered from another neighbor and another neighbor floods us with kale that we eat all winter and he’s always ready to lend a hand.

We have great neighbors and we try to be great neighbors too.

My wife and I pick up litter along the road and share our bounty of apricots and plums. We make sure everyone knows we have every tool imaginable should they need a PEX crimper or laser level. We also make a point of putting our giveaways at the end of the driveway before carting them off the thrift store or dump. Bits of wood, fencing and other odds and ends disappear quickly.

We live surrounded by people that know us and seem to like us, people that ask us for favors and grant us favors in return. We feel connected to this place. This isn’t just somewhere we live, it’s somewhere we belong.

Rising rates of social isolation have become a major public health concern. Some people don’t have much in the way of family and if they are older, many of their friends may have already passed. Fortunately, nearly everyone has neighbors.

Benefits of Neighborhood Ties

A study published by the Gerontological Society of America noted that our relationship with our neighbors “is especially important for more developmental aspects of psychological well-being.”

“Having continuously low levels of contact with neighbors, or losing contact with neighbors … was associated with declining levels of eudaimonic well-being. Associations between contact and this aspect of well-being were explained, in part, by less perceived support from neighbors.”

Eudaimonic well-being is the more intrinsic sense of well-being we get from living a meaningful, authentic life. Hedonic well-being is achieved through enjoying pleasures, and minimizing pains.

Eudaimonic is considered the more durable form of happiness. An overemphasis on hedonic happiness can lead to over-indulgence.

An Australian study published in Social Science and Medicine tried to discover if it was possible to measure the benefits we get from our neighbors and found we could.

“A better sense of neighborhood was associated with better physical and mental health, lower stress, better social support and being physically active,” it noted.

Living in a supportive neighborhood where neighbors say hello as they pass can also make it easier to ask for help when needed, a Japanese study published in BMJ Open found.

How To Build a Better Neighborhood

If you are hesitant to knock on a neighbor’s door and introduce yourself, just keep a pleasant remark in your back pocket for when you pass by while they’re in their yard one day.

If you’d like to strengthen the ties already in your neighborhood, consider initiating a block party. Every year, one family on our road hosts a big party with live bands and food trucks and invites the whole road.

You could also start a neighborhood Facebook group. You just need a dedicated administrator to make sure only true locals are allowed in.

We have a Facebook group for our road. We all keep track of a family of bears wandering the area, charting the growth of the cubs and reminding each other to keep our garbage tucked away till garbage day. I’ve met two people there that have offered to let us use their boats on the lake we all overlook.

It’s wonderful to know the people around you, to have a pleasant exchange every time you pass a familiar face on the street.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.