Day 13-Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Day 13-On day thirteen I chose a neighbor for an act of kindness. Neighbors have been on my mind a lot lately. Perhaps it is because I gave my father a book by Mister Rogers as part of his Christmas gift, or the fact that I have been contemplating how people can live so close in proximity with others and not know much about them, or maybe neighbors have been on my mind more because I am more focused on community responsibility in general due to this project. I know my neighbors, most of them, and have spent time talking in yards, looking after each other's homes when someone is traveling, and generally just spending time together. The time spent together has been brief since moving into our new neighborhood, and I hope to get to know my neighbors better in the new year. In fact, I'll go ahead and say, this is going to be one of my resolutions for the new year. My resolution will be to get to know others living around me better and provide more support to them than I did this year. The word neighbor is an interesting one to me. A neighbor does not have to just be someone beside whom one lives, but the person who is in near proximity at any time during the day, an office-mate, or even just a fellow human being who happens to be part of one's experience of living. Neighbors are more than just next door. Shouldn't we try to improve the human experience of every person with whom we interact? I wonder what gets in the way. Perhaps the disconnect between humans has grown as a result of technology and the "faceless" communications available to us. Perhaps we are just more self sufficient and our survival does not depend on those around us, nor them on us. Either way, I am going to work throughout 2013 to improve, or at least try to improve, the experience everyone has when I interact with them. I will smile more, rush less and be more mindful in my interactions with others. With that in mind, I decided to get my son in on the kindness today and he helped me to prepare and bake pumpkin bread for our neighbors across the street. I thought this might be a nice gesture and thoughtful gift from us that was prepared with kindness and the idea that we are reaching out to our neighbors for their continued friendship and provide an invitation for more time together (we do not know them very well). My son was really excited about helping in the kitchen and thoroughly enjoyed the project this afternoon. Not only am I doing acts of kindness but I hope I am raising a kind, generous and empathic young boy. His future wife can thank me later :). 352 more days of kindness...are you in?