I was walking through my neighborhood this morning, realizing how much I like walking through my neighborhood in the morning.
No fewer than six of my neighbors leaned out their front doors or hollered down the street to say hi.
That sounds like a small thing. It's not.
There's a loneliness epidemic in our country, that I've been talking about for years. The US Surgeon General said it represents a major public health risk. Social prescribing is even a thing now, where your doctor refers you to a "link worker" to help connect you with local groups and activities. The healthcare savings are demonstrable.
I feel lucky to be doing it the old fashioned way though, with friends up and down my street. I met them because my house has a front porch and I sit on it every morning drinking coffee, saying hello to the same people over and over.
That's the power of neighborhood.
Knowing your neighbors is free.
But it's maybe not as easy as it once was. Most of the houses in my neighborhood were built 90 years ago and have front porches facing the street. When I'm in Pensacola, I am a fixture on that porch. So are Wally and Newt who have neighborhood girlfriends and wait for them to walk by.
In the 1950's people moved out of urban areas (if you can call Pensacola urban) and moved to the suburbs. There, houses were more likely to have well-developed, private backyards. Not a bad thing, I have one too, but the emphasis went from front porch to back yard, where it's harder to chat with someone walking their dog.
But from here? It's easy peas.
Bring the Front Porch Back!
Because proximity over time = friendship. Five years I've been sitting on this front porch, saying hello to people I might not otherwise know.
For example, Pensacola is a big running town, and my next door neighbors are serious distance runners. They put an Igloo cooler on a stump in their front yard and every day JR cleans and refills it with fresh water. As a result, anybody running within a half mile radius stops in to fill up. I chat with them and think about becoming a runner.
Fred and Lisa, two doors down, are having trouble with their fruit trees and because of my now infamous pears, I stopped in to look at them. Unhelpfully, I said I had no idea why they weren't bearing. I gave Lisa the last pear off my tree and she gave me peach jam she made. It's delicious.
It feels like a different time and I like it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, when the hurricane hits, you can bet your boots all of us will be out on the street with chainsaws, tarps and generators ready to help each other out. I love knowing that.
Of course, Sam and I are headed to a high desert of New Mexico for a while, and that will mess up my scene, but my hood isn't going anywhere. I will miss it, but there are neighbors to be met in New Mexico too.
It's a habit now.
Social fabric matters.
At Girl Catch Fire, we talk a lot about four-room wellness - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. For decades, we as a culture, have neglected community in favor of privacy and independence. Those are good values too but perhaps we've dialed them up too high and a correction is needed.
Knowing the people around you can be as easy as moving chairs to the front porch; or hosting a friendsgiving, a Sunday afternoon BBQ, a neighborhood swap meet or cocktail hour. In my experience, the more you do it, the more people will ask you to do it.
This is the direction Girl Catch Fire is heading. You want it live? We're going to do live. Immersive. Experiential. Initiative. A practice you can take home and replicate to build your social fabric locally.
Doesn't that sound fun? It is.
If you're lonely, start with your neighbors.
Maybe double the banana bread recipe and take one over. Of course it's awkward with someone you don't know, but it's the reach out that matters. The more you do it, the less awkward it becomes.
Is there a better time than Thanksgiving? A lot of people would love to have something to do. Friendsgiving is the bomb. Love Dinner is great too. Here's a link with how-to instructions.
Invite your neighbors and see what happens.
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