Herb is my next-door neighbor. He was the first to build a house in this subdivision nearly 40 years ago. He moved into his brand-new house with his wife and two kids. Since then, his kids have grown up and moved away. I don’t see them very often. Mostly, they come by to check on Dad since his wife, Mary, died several years ago. Herb was always a different sort of fellow. But after becoming a widower, his uniqueness has become more pronounced. His fence serves as a good example.
When we moved in 35 years ago, Herb had a nicely trimmed and well-spaced line of shrubs between our houses. The kids could run through them to visit their friends. The shrubs were a suggestion of a property line than anything else. But over the years, that property line has become more and more critical to Herb’s sense of self and security.
It began a few years after we moved in. Herb’s kids got into a shoving match with some neighbor kids, some of whom were African American. Boys get into kid fights all the time. It was part of growing up. But Herb was upset that his kids came out on the losing end.
Herb reported it to me when we ran into each other doing yard work. With visible anger, Herb said, “I can’t believe what this neighborhood is coming to. Those thugs down the street beat up my boy.” I replied, “I heard the boys had a dust-up at the park yesterday.” I didn’t hear that anyone was beat-up. Is your boy ok?” Herb answered, “Yea, he’s a tough kid, but his eye is a little purple. The way he tells it, the black boys jumped him. Herb pointed out that his boys were minding their business when the “gang” jumped him.
I shook my head a bit. “That does not sound like those kids. Are you sure your boy wasn’t fudging the truth a bit?’
Herb did not like my response. He replied, “You can close your eyes to what’s really happening around her, but those boys and their families are going make a mess out of our neighborhood. They are going to bring more of “their kind” in, and before you know it, we will be living in a ghetto.” Herb’s uniqueness was starting to show along with his increasingly “red neck.”
To be fair, Herb is not a bad guy, just someone who fears change. Herb wants to look ahead and see his boys living the same good life that he has lived. He wants to rest his head on his pillow at night, knowing that all is right with the world and that he and his family are safe. But this “change” in the neighborhood prompted Herb to build his first fence, clearly marking every square inch of his property in a community he saw as becoming increasingly hostile to his hopes and dreams.
It has been 30 years since that fence became a brick wall. Herb added a gate to his property about 15 years ago as further changes in the neighborhood pushed his fears. Asians, Hispanics, and more Blacks moved in. Herb no longer had the “luxury of walking through the neighborhood and knowing every family or seeing people who looked like him. His walls did more than keep the neighbors out. They now kept him and his wife in, safe and insulated from the world beyond. He did not visit his neighbors, and they did not visit him. He continued living their isolated life, maintaining friendships with people who had moved out of the neighborhood. When they got together, the former neighbors commiserated about the changes destroying the “old neighborhood.” The outer walls had stopped at five feet tall. But that inner wall continued to grow year after year, along with his fear.
Herb’s wife died several years ago. Unfortunately, she was his last tie to the world beyond his walls. The neighbors knew her by name. She stayed in touch with the kids and with old friends. But when she died suddenly, Herb’s world became a kingdom of one. He spent his days listening to Fox News and AM talk radio. He heard many stories confirming his worst fears about the world “out there.” He became a prisoner in his own home, trapped by his fears. He put bars on his windows and had a small arsenal in his home to protect himself from the outside world. His uniqueness had become open and unequivocal hostility to everything beyond his understanding.
There is another way.
My neighbor on the other side is called Sam. He had two strong beliefs. The first was that the “Good Old Days” never really were. Second, he refused to accept that the best of life was behind him. Therefore, he looked ahead with anticipation, not anger and fear. He enjoyed getting to know new people. When he faced the unknown, he had a trusting humility that helped him accept the mystery for what it was, something he did not understand that evoked awe and wonder.
Sam had his bad days in the neighborhood. There was the time when the kids wrecked his hedge along the street with their Street Soccer. There was the time a neighbor’s tree came down and took out the edge of his garage. But, when he got to his wit’s end, he did not need to find a “boogie man” upon whom to blame all his troubles. He leaned on his trust that the world would make sense of the mystery even if he did not “get it.” He did not need to figure it all out. He knew he was not that smart. He would trust life to sort things out as he walked through those troubled days.
Herb was all about conspiracies that told him about strangers who were out to take his things and make his life difficult. Sam, however, understood that conspiracy thinking was ego-thinking – all about the pride of knowing and believing that he has some measure of control over the mystery. Sam knew he had limited control and found a way to live without fear and blaming everyone and everything around him for his problems. Sam did not need a conspiracy theory that went around the “crazy bend” to “explain” a mystery. He simply let the mystery teach him things he did not yet know. And if it didn’t make sense, he trusted that someday it might all come together if he paid attention.
Sam did not want fences around his life. He found them too confining. He liked living out in the neighborhood even though there was much he never understood. Sam even found that old hedge to be too much of a barrier. He took it out and sat on his porch, watching the neighborhood kids play ball. Somedays, he even took a pitcher of lemonade out to them. Yep, there is a better way for those who, like Sam, are humble enough to trust life to teach them through the wondrous mystery that surrounds us all.
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