Who are you physically closest to in your community right now? Like, who lives right next to you? Do you know them at all? Do you want to know them, much less, love them?
Today I’m inviting you to manifest whatever amount of love you can for your next door neighbor – and if this neighbor is someone that you’ve experienced any kind of discord with then hopefully this process will be even lovelier for you and them, by extension!
It can be challenging living in community with people who differ in their views and ways of living from us. I don’t know that we’re all supposed to get along, or even strive to for that matter though it *is* how I want to live in my community. If you’ve struggled with your neighbor, reflect now on the origin story of you and them until you’ve come to the present moment. Was there a sense when you met them for the first time of how your neighborly relationship would evolve? Has the relationship deepened over time in positive or negative ways or just remained relatively flat? Are you gathering with them and other neighbors for romping at the ocean like the folks in the picture above?
Whatever the relationship may or may not be, your neighbor(s) ARE literally the closest people to you, and while we may not spend much time at all thinking about or interacting with them, in an emergency or other crucial point in time, it stands to reason that we may well need to call on them for something. When’s the last time you rang them up to see how they were doing or knocked on their door for a cup of sugar or to offer them some of your bounty – or have you ever?
If you are in a less communal state with your neighbor, then spend the next few minutes quietly accepting them as you know them to be (since this may very well differ from how they really are) and remembering their human nature. This is the first seed we’ll plant as we continue to develop loving our community.
TimeSpaceOne 