Neighbor, Please Take Your Hate Sign Down

I want all the same things as you, we should be allies—not enemies

Neighbor, I get it, times are hard. You don't make enough money. You can barely afford your home. When something goes wrong with the car, it creates an expense that seems to bring the whole world crumbling down.

I get it. I understand. The same thing happens to me.

I'm the same as you. I worry about my children. I worry about what kind of future they have. I'm frustrated that I'm not able to provide more for them.

I want them to get a good job. I want them to get an education. I want them to have access to compassionate healthcare if they should ever fall sick.

Isn't that what you want too? Don't you love your kids? Don't you love your family? Don't you want just a little bit of security?

I think, when you push away all the distractions, you'll see that at the core of things, we agree.

We agree.

We agree.

Really, the only thing I want out of this life is to work hard throughout the week, and have one day of rest that I can share with my family. I want to sit with them and watch a movie. I don't even care if it's some foolish animated movie with annoying, singing toasters or whatever. I'm not watching the movie anyway.

I'm watching my kids. I'm watching their faces light up in smiles. I listen to their laughter.

Aren't we the same?

I want them to have enough food to eat. Prices these days are more than I can afford. When I drive to the grocery store, the cost of the drive is enough to cripple me. When I look at the price of the products, my legs buckle again. I think, “How am I going to be able to afford this?”

So neighbor, I ask you, how do we bring those prices down?

Isn't that what we both want? Don't we want to make life a little easier? We're not asking for anything extreme. We aren't asking for private jets and private islands and gilded towers to look down upon the world.

I don't mind rubbing elbows with my neighbors. I like my neighbors. My neighbors are the people I rely on. If the car breaks down and I can't get my kids to school, I can ask a neighbor to take them along with his own children. If the road get slippery and I slide into a ditch, my neighbor helps pull me out.

If I'm away on vacation, I can turn to my neighbor and say, “Hey, can you keep your eye on the place while I'm away?”

And they do it! They help out! They don't do it for pay, they do it because these are the small acts of kindness that keep the world spinning. We look out for each other. We help each other.

If we put aside all the distractions, we should be able to see that our neighbors are not to blame.

Our neighbors did not cause the price of gas to go through the roof.

Our neighbors do not set the price of eggs.

Our neighbors do not inflate the price of health care.

It's not them.

And yet, we're all engaged in hating our neighbors all the time. We say awful things each and every day. We don't say it to their face. No, no, we have social media for that. We post hateful things. We post snarky memes. We complain and complain and complain.

We complain about our neighbors each and every day. The problem is that our neighbors aren't doing anything.

We say things that make the members of our own families turn away. They abandon us. They leave us behind. If we see them in the streets, it puts ice water in our veins. It makes us tighten up and scowl and rage.

Why are we so angry at them?

Our families don't set the price of eggs.

We're angry at so many people, but we're never angry at the people who should really take the blame.

It's not our neighbors putting the squeeze on us. The people hurting us are far, far away. They never brush elbows with us. They fly in private jets to private islands and climb into gilded towers so they can look down at the rest of us. We fight, and they laugh and laugh and laugh.

Our neighbors are the people who help us when we're in need. You can knock on the door and ask for a cup of sugar if you're out. That's what we used to do. That's what we used to believe.

Now we sit in our house, and if we run out of sugar we go without. We go without out of spite because we no longer think there's any merit in basic respect for human dignity.

Neighborliness has gone extinct.

We sit alone in our houses, and when something goes wrong our neighbor is no longer there to help us. They're gone. They were taken away. We said nothing. We didn't complain.

In fact, so many of our neighbors would cheer if they saw us leave. They sit in the dilapidated shacks they can barely afford, and look at everyone around them with scorn. They've been taught to believe that they deserve more.

The tragedy is that we could have more. Our neighbors would help. They all want the same thing. We all want the same things. Above all, we all really, really, really want to help each other.

We long to help each other.

We love to help each other.

We're angry, right now, because we have been deceived. We've been told that the only way to prosperity is to hate our neighbor.

Who tells you that? Where does that message come from? What's the source of hate? What's the source of misery? What's the source of resentment and rage?

Our neighbor doesn't set the price of eggs.

Stop making them take the blame.

Open your curtains, let the light in. Shovel the sidewalk just to be nice. See if that brings about a positive change.

Stop posting rage.

In another age, we lived by a different faith.

We used to say, “Love thy neighbor.”

Let's go back to those days.

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