Good Neighbor Resilience
Caring without Becoming Consumed
Spontaneous post here.
My wife and I were on our morning dog walk today when we encountered a pile of trash in the street. There’s always litter in our neighborhood: cans, bottles, wrappers, straws, masks, and the like. Some of us do organized and impromptu pick ups to keep the issue at bay. But sometimes you find a massive pile of trash in the middle of the street and it’s frustrating. In these times I notice a certain bitterness creeping in, and I don’t want to feel that way. Instead, I want to care about my community without letting the problems take up so much headspace.
I have to do some serious mental gymnastics to not become jaded by littering, dumping, and other neighborhood issues. This morning, I started to think about strategies for staying positive. How can we care without getting sucked down the hole of judgment and negativity?
The term that came to mind today was “good neighbor resilience.” I recognize this attaches value to it all, effectively making those who care the “good” people. But in the city of Fred Rogers, the term “good neighbor” holds some weight.
Let’s consider the “resilience” piece. At the community level, resilience is defined as “the sustained ability of a community to use available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations.” As individuals, when we work to stay positive and solution-oriented, we draw upon our personal available resources, the key resource being our mindset.
So what’s one to do? I try to not think about it too much. And try to check myself when I’m “ascribing intent.” Honestly, it’s impossible to know why someone litters or dumps, or sometimes how something’s ended up on the ground. Maybe a person’s mask fell out of their pocket or a driver hit a bump and trash went flying out from the bed of a truck. Unless we see it, we really don’t know. I also try to spring into action. I feel a lot better after a 15-20 minute pick up than when I dwell on it being there.
It helps, too, to have collaborators. Today, it wasn’t me who pushed the bag out of the middle of the street. It was Kathi. And, when one of us has a chance to go back and pick it up maybe we’ll find that someone has already (always a pleasant surprise!).
It can take some work to remain positive, resilient, and committed, but its a worthy practice. There are a lot of community pain points to which this can be applied. Whatever your frustration, what are some of the things you do to keep from going negative or throwing in the towel?
Gratitude Notes
I’m testing out a new section to my posts, offering some gratitude notes. Here’s what I have for starters:
I’m grateful to Ella for recently sharing this fun and encouraging song to me: The Keep Going Song. It makes me smile every time I listen to it.
To Maura, thanks for introducing me to A Sense of Time, A Sense of Place. It sparked some ideas! I’ll be writing about the “genius of place” in an upcoming post.