When you meet your neighbours you may learn the meaning of the word
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours
— William Hazlitt
AMAGAZINE I was reading posed this question: “Are you a good neighbour?” It made me stop and think about whether I was a good person or a churl. Do you know the people who live next door or across the road just well enough for a courteous greeting as you get into your car and drive off? Or do you take the trouble to meet your neighbours, to create a connection and gain an insight into what kind of people they are?
I have lived in the same suburb for several decades. To my shame, I have seen people come and go but I haven’t made any real connection with any of my neighbours. For a while that made me feel guilty, but then I realised most of the people in this enclave do the same. As I walk my dogs around the suburb, I see how hard it is to actually see into anyone’s home, mine included.
Most of our houses have high walls and heavy gates. Many have electrified alarm detectors on the walls, and almost everyone has dogs. These range from little hounds to big mastiffs and I am convinced it is the dogs that do the better job of alerting their owners.
In addition, there are at least three security companies that roam around in cars observing the six or seven blocks of houses where I live.
There are also two “bobbies on the beat”, who walk up and down our street, checking out anyone who does not look like a resident. If strangers dawdle too long, one of the “bobbies” from one or other of the security companies will send a car to investigate.
I understand it is important to have neighbours with whom I can make contact in a crisis. So I made a journey to meet my neighbours and was happy to find that I live in a community of white, black and Indian families who speak many different languages.
This in turn made me curious about the origin of the word “neighbour”, so I hauled out my Oxford Dictionary. To my surprise, the word “neahgebur” originated around 900BC and over the centuries has evolved into “neighbour”, denoting an “inhabitant peasant farmer”.
Over time, the word was sometimes shortened to “boor”, an unskilled and rough person, and somehow “boor” evolved into “boer”, which landed up in the Afrikaans language, where it meant “farm labourer”, pretty much what it meant in 900BC.
Communities in that time lived very differently to how we live today. They lived in villages and small towns and depended on what they could cultivate and sell. Families had to look after themselves, but they also knew they could not ignore the poverty of the rest of the community.
The church tried to help the poorest of the poor. It gave both adults and children a grasp of writing and reading, and looked after the youngsters when both parents worked the fields or in the homes of the gentry who lived in vast tracts of gardens and woodlands.
Centuries later, in a hyper-mobile digital world, do you ever knock on the door of your neighbour and ask if you can come in for a visit?
I don’t, and I guess most of my neighbours don’t either. When there is an issue that affects all of us, we head for the local school hall or the grand church that sits in the centre of our neighbourhood. Beyond that, we wave a greeting when we see each other, but then get on with our lives.
I hauled my beloved book of quotations off the shelf to see what the great writers and thinkers had to say about neighbours.
The 18th-century writer William Hazlitt hit the nail on the head when he wrote: “The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.”
In the 19th century, Rudyard Kipling, creator of timeless tales such as The Jungle Book and Gunga Din, also had sage advice to offer. He wrote: “Borrow trouble for yourself, if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbours.”
To my mind, however, the smartest phrase I have found comes from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall. It is about how he and his neighbour decided to rebuild a broken wall, the neighbour on one side and Frost himself on the other side, and the recurring phrase is: “Good fences make good neighbours.”
I cannot think of any clearer way of saying this.