Neighbors

MJ used to worry a lot about neighbors and making loud noises letting them know we were fighting, and unfortunately that has happened pretty often. It's just the nature of our relationship: we are OK until we fight, and it gets very loud very quickly when it does happen. Both of us were very sensitive and prone to getting our feelings hurt. So I'm always a little embarrassed seeing our neighbors in the hallway because I wonder if they've heard us fighting from before. We were reprimanded by one neighbor a few years ago for being too loud, but that guy turned out to be a jerk anyway and we never talk to him. I was reminded about the importance of neighbors recently when one of our neighbors returned our set of keys that I had left in the mailbox, they were very nice about knocking on our door and saying hi. Other than my sister coming to help and some repair/ maintenance crews, that was one of the only times anyone has ever just voluntarily knocked on our door for something nice. It made me think of a simpler time of life: the 1990's, specifically, when my friends would not text beforehand, there were barely any phones available, they would just show up and knock on our door and ask if "I could play." Pure, genuine question that I wish I would get asked nowadays. Instead all I get are spam calls asking me to buy something or the Red Cross's daily call to see if I could do a platelet donation. Even in this day and age of smartphones and TikTok and having the whole world available to you at the press of a button, neighbors are still important: they're the ones closest to you in case of an emergency. I recently attended a building potluck party to get everyone outside and welcome the arrival of spring; I was surprised at how everyone was so welcoming and nice in person, reminding me that Reddit is a community of faceless people typing behind a keyboard, while there are still real people living just above and below me who are much more approximate. All the conversations were genuine, conversations are just easier to have face-to-face; you know when to interrupt when someone's almost done talking, you know from facial expressions what are important parts of the story, conversations are just better when they're done face to face. I think as we move increasingly to a digtial age, we miss some of that when we're always online. It's so easy to lose ourselves online, to lose the ability to interact or communicate. It's so easy to just send a "congratulations" text to someone and just be done with that interaction, never pausing to have a conversation or schedule anything meaningful. Much harder to do in this day and age, but much more meaningful, is to talk in person and get some "FaceTime." MJ and I have tried to relay this philosophy to Baby Girl Yan: as little screen time as possible, EXCEPT talking to grandparents or other family members on the phone, where their faces are on the screen. And who knows, with the encouraging signs of backlash against the AI takeover, maybe neighborhood parties will make a comeback, America will implement a National "Meet Your Neighbors" Day, people will just take a day each month to say hi to everyone around them. And we can finally hash it out with that guy who chided us for being too loud.