📿 The Commonplace Miracle of Being Neighbors

On loving-kindness, making small talk, and bananas from Ecuador

Hello you, Adreanna here with this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

Taking Ruby grocery shopping is a joy.

She gets to see where her beloved bananas come from — which, for now, is a kiosk in the produce section. Some day, when she’s able to conceptualize beyond her direct experience, we’ll have the “global food system” conversation and the “this is why we shop mostly at the farmer’s market” conversation. But for now she’s figuring out that bananas originate from a display shelf at Hannaford: gleaming yellow, stacked five to a bunch.

Ruby is a social baby; a pageant baby, really. She greets everyone in her eye line with a particularly regal wave, like a tiny Queen Elizabeth riding nobly in the seat of the shopping cart. I wheel her down the aisles and she waves and smiles with her two bottom teeth in a greeting of total sincerity.

Most shoppers are charmed; some stop to greet her and gush effusively about how cute she is. Some smile despite themselves, pretending not to notice as they pick out their frozen pizzas while she cranes to get their attention.

Going anywhere with Ruby is a very public event, which is something that I’m still getting used to.

When we moved to a village of 1200 residents from a city of 8 million, I felt suddenly very naked and exposed. I don’t think I realized how much comfort I found in the invisibility cloak that a metropolis offers it’s people.

I missed disappearing into a crowd, surrounded and unnoticed. It was liberating to melt into a sea of strangers, all so preoccupied with their own thing that my presence barely registered. I could roll into a yoga class and bend, sweat, and cry through savasana, and leave feeling healed and unnoticed. In a village of 1200 people, I would be crying next to Seth who lives down the street from me and Heather who works at the bookstore. “It’s a physical release! I’m not in crisis!” I would have to explain as we made small talk shelving our yoga blocks.

The freedom of anonymity doesn’t exist living in a village, and certainly not with a baby like Ruby. What I’m finding does exist in spades, though, is a feeling of neighborhood, of community. There’s a sense that all 1200 of us are doing this life thing together— whether we like it or not.

Sometimes I consider what a commonplace miracle this is; that myself, Ruby, and the other 1198 people who live in our village are alive on this planet, at the exact same time, in the great expanse of human history.

What a commonplace miracle it is that in the 197 square miles of Earth, we would live in the same 5 mile radius. What a commonplace miracle it is that we would both be shopping for groceries at the very same store at 1:00 pm on a Tuesday afternoon. And what a commonplace miracle that we’re both reaching for bananas, stacked five to a bunch, that were grown and transported from Ecuador.

In loving-kindness meditation, the practice is to generate a feeling of generosity that we send as aspirations to others. We consider those in our lives that we’re fond of, those who we find difficult or annoying, and those who exist in the background of our lives: the so-called “neutral” people.

I often think of Mr. Rogers as the avatar for this practice. I picture him changing into his cardigan and lacing up his navy blue Topsiders, singing “Won’t you be my neighbor.” There’s an attitude that we’re all neighbors in loving-kindness, all in this together, having a shared experience. No matter how I feel about you, you’re worthy of neighborly kindness and respect.

{Video: Mr. Rogers on loving yourself and loving your neighbor.}

As in loving-kindness meditation, the way that we feel about our actual neighbors has the potential to vary across a spectrum.

We likely have the neighbors that we’re fond of. Maybe they’re actual friends of ours; our kids play together, and they invite us over for pizza on their porch. We likely also have neighbors that we find difficult or annoying. They might have offensive political bumper stickers or throw empty beer cans out their windows, landing on our lawn. (Come on, guys.) And then there are the neighbors who we just don’t really notice. Our so-called “neutral” people. In cities they’re abundant: the people around us that barely register. They are also the people who stock the grocery store shelves, and who grow our baby’s bananas in Ecuador.

There’s nothing like a trip to the grocery store to remind oneself that our neighborhood is both very small, and also interdependent and global. We’re ALL doing this life thing together— whether we like it or not.

I once met a person with a brilliant mind who considered talking about the weather to be the lowest form of conversation: idle chatter, pointless talk. I often think, brilliance aside, how completely off they were on this. Talking about the weather is far from pointless; it might even border on the profound. It’s an available rope of connection that we can throw out to strangers, these so-called “neutral” people, to put the both of us at ease.

“How about this heat?” we might say. “It looks like it’ll finally break on Tuesday.”

There’s an acknowledgment of a shared experience, a willingness to recognize one another.

In it’s silly little way, talking about the weather conveys that I might not know who you are, or anything about your life, but I know that we exist together. You are like me in that we both feel the summer heat. There is something that we have in common.

And honestly? In this moment in time that feels aggressively divisive, I’ll take any rope of connection that we can throw to one another. Like loving-kindness meditation. Talking about the weather. Or a waving baby in a shopping cart.

On our trip to Hannaford last week, Ruby waved at an older man standing next to us in the self-checkout kiosks. “She’s so friendly!” he exclaimed, throwing back a rope of conversation. We scanned our items side-by-side and made enjoyable small talk about the weather and the price of food. He shared about his two adult daughters who he didn’t see much as they were growing up due to his job as a long distance trucker.

“Take good care of her” he said, waving goodbye to Ruby. “The way the world is going now, we have to look out for these kids” It occurred to me that it’s very possible that we live on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum.

He might drive a truck with offensive political bumper stickers. He might deny global warming and throw trash out the window. We might have completely different ideas of what it means to “take care” of each other, and who deserves access to care, and how to “look out for these kids”. And also, in that moment, we had a rope of connection made of neighborly kindness and respect.

“I couldn’t agree more.” I responded honestly, as Ruby waved goodbye. And under my breath, I conjured Mr. Rogers and whispered some loving-kindness in his direction. “May we all feel safe and live with ease.”

We’re all in this together. It’s the neighborly thing to do.

Thank you for reading along with us here at The Laundry! Offering your attention for the 8 minutes it takes to read (or listen to) an essay like this is a gift — we know how valuable your attention is and hope that you find what we write here useful. If you feel moved to do so, please share this post, restack this post, or hit that “heart” button below, it goes a long way towards helping other readers find us inside this noisy internet. 🌺