My Simple Community

December 14, 2010

I wish the December holidays were in March or June or something.  My problem is that December is the last month of the year and I have to finish all of the end-of-the-year stuff at the same time as thinking about the holidays.

I confess. I generally don’t get to the holiday part until it’s kind of late. This post is evidence that I am running a bit ahead of the curve this year.  However it is no promise that I will do it right or even have my priorities completely in order.

For me, end of year stuff is 99% about being sure I have paid the bills and have a sense for how I will pay the bills next year. For me, and nearly everyone else, this is a bigger challenge this year and the last few years than it was in 2007 or earlier.  That is a stark reality.  Financial life in America is tougher now.  So my attention and focus on paying the bills is a double killer this time of year.  It begs me to give it even more time, and the time I do devote certainly does not put me in a holiday spirit when I consider the economy and what I know to be the dire straits of some folks I care about a lot but I am in no position to help.

So what do I do?  What do we do?  The best we can I suppose.

Behind me are literally piles of stuff I should finish.  In front of me is the keyboard and this post.  If you look at the dates to my posts here you can see this has not been a priority for my time lately even though I maintain encouraging community is the most important thing I am doing with my productive time.  I’m saying that I am not practicing what I preach nearly as well nor as often as I would like.

I think the solution is to think of the holidays as lots and lots of moments. I will complete this post in under ten minutes. Ten minutes well spent. I am saying yes to momentary opportunities to advance the joy of the holidays.  I think my wife Vicki would attest to that. I did more this weekend to prepare for the season.  I enjoyed it.  I always do.  I liked the outcomes. It’s just that, before saying “Yes” to a moment, I have many more moments when I say I can’t afford to take the time.

Then it hit me…

It takes less time to say yes to a moment and do it than it does to think through whether I should or not.

August 22, 2010

I’ve been searching the web for examples of human kindness trying to find either a source of many great examples to follow or an approach to encourage kindness on this website. In yesterday’s post I talked about the difference between doers, receivers, and reporters. Having now read several approaches on kindness I want to add a fourth dimension – observers – and link it to reporters. More than that, I’m sensing a pattern in what I read that makes me think observer/reporters might be just the thing.

I have read a lot of stories now from “doers.” My dominant feeling – the overwhelming majority of cases – was that these people did something notable that moved them and that they wanted to share that experience and encourage others to do the same. That’s what I am aiming at ultimately here as well. But my reading of their stories left me at “notable” and didn’t get me to “inspired.” Notable makes me appreciate that person, inspired gets me to do the same thing or something similar.

I’m not sure the “doer” can inspire that. I am confident a “receiver” can, but being on the receiving end of kindness (sadly) happens so rarely and – if it was truly random – a receiver isn’t wired to report about it.

A second challenge is the complexity of many of the things I read. If there is any planning involved it is no longer random. I’m not saying it has to be random to be good, but I think there is something wonderful about the spontaneous, and I am certainly saying I think it needs to be simple, maybe something that has no more than one step to accomplish. Here are a couple of examples:

(I’ve shared this before.) My back fence neighbor Bill is 82 and has one of those little hotdog dogs named Newton. Bill walks Newton {I stand corrected: Newton walks Bill.} several times a day and most often goes around the block and past our house. But the first trip of the morning is a clear routine and Bill & Newton are on a mission.

Bill gets up around 5 and waits until he sees the newspaper delivery person drive by throwing papers out the window and then they leave.  My newspaper can be anywhere given the challenge of drive-by-papering – it’s hard to drive 60 down a neighborhood street and throw out the window with accuracy. Anyway, every morning, Bill & Newton find our paper (along with the papers of most of our neighbors) and lean them against the front door so we neither need to look for it or even put on our shoes to fetch it. 

Bill’s secondary paper delivery gives him something to do, but it does much more than that. It reminds ALL of us first thing EVERY DAY that we live in a NEIGHBORHOOD of people who look out for each other and care about each other.  It also lets me know that, for another day, I am fortunate to still have Bill & Newton as neighbors.

Here’s another example – not a story, just a one-step act of kindness that can be done on the spur of the moment. All you need is a plastic bag from the grocery store or pharmacy. And all you do is take a walk with it empty and fill it with liter and throw it away when you finish the walk.

Inspired by either story?  That is the point.

So I keep amending what I think might work. Thanks for your patience. How can I motivate you to OBSERVE life around you either for the things that people are already doing that would be easily repeated – inspiring - or specific instances of the Bill’s in the world? And then how do I inspire you to REPORT it here so we can inspire more simple acts of community kindness?

July 7, 2010

Even I can do this one… in fact, I will.  And I will get back to you on this.  I am going to go to the store and buy Betty Crocker cookie mix and make a batch of cookies and give them to a neighbor I don’t often interact with.

That can’t take much more than five minutes, right? And how much does a batch of cookies cost? Not much, right? More important, I bet it will be worth more to my neighbor than the five minutes and cash it takes to do it.

June 28, 2010

Every morning – and I mean EVERY morning – my back fence neighbor Bill “delivers” the morning paper.  His is really the second, and far more important, delivery. The first is the drive by heave at 90 mph by the official delivery person.

It amazes me that they nearly always hit my yard at that speed. And in fact, a few times I have been out in the morning as they went by.  It’s something to see.  Full speed, I am convinced the vehicle (not sure it’s a car or truck because it’s going too fast) has no brakes. Two houses from me the driver winds up, next door he releases, it crosses my neighbor’s yard in the air and lands in mine, AND he waves!  Now THAT is Superman!

Not really…. BILL is Superman.  Every morning he times his first walk of Newton his dog to when he hears the paper delivery rocket in the neighborhood. He knows the route by heart. Bill follows after at the pace of a dachshund, finds the paper in a person’s yard (I wonder if he thinks of it as something of a daily Easter Egg hunt?) and puts it within a foot of the front door so that I and my neighbors don’t need to step outside to get the paper.

Not only is that magnificent five-minute community, but it accomplishes four things: Bill gets a good daily walk (he is in his 80s), every morning I know he is ok because the paper is by my door, not in the rose bush, I don’t have to fetch my paper, and Newton takes care of business.

How many things can you accomplish in five minutes that remind YOUR WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD DAILY that we are community in the same way Bill’s “paper route” does here? 

June 1, 2010

Even if you do this by yourself, a walk around the block improves your community (unless, of course, you live out in the country and your nearest neighbor is more than a mile away).

I love it every time a neighbor walks by.  That’s community. In our neighborhood nearly everyone sells hello and many stop and chat – even if they don’t know you. Walking, talking neighbors are something of the glue of a neighborhood. Someone walking by is near my space, coming closer to me, more available to me, even nearly an unconscious invitation for me to be out there too.

Alternatively, it’s very hard to make friends if you spend all your time in the house or in the back yard behind an 8 foot wooden fence.

Unfortunately, some people live in neighborhoods where taking a walk is not the safest idea. I certainly would love to hear ideas about how people living in those neighborhoods can more fully bond.

If you are safe to walk and are able, come on… take five minutes. Walk around the block. Be a living invitation to more community.