Are You at Peace With Your Neighbor?

Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplas

LOVE your neighbor. So we are told. It’s not always easy. Just to keep peace is difficult. Rock music from your neighbor’s apartment vibrates your walls. Their kids create bedlam in the hall. Out on the street, you get mugged. On the highway, drivers cut in front of you—blow your horn and you may get shot! Exaggeration? In some places, but not in big cities. The suburbs and the rurals have their own set of problems that make neighbor love difficult.

Much of the stress stems from this modern high-tech system of things. Thousands jammed into cities like scorpions in a bottle. Commuters fuming as they inch along in rush-hour traffic. Country dwellers rushing out screaming as the neighbor’s chickens wreck their garden. Farmers losing their shirts as bugs immune to pesticides destroy their crops. And everywhere industries belching out their pollutants. The air turns brown, acid rain falls, fish in lakes die, even the water table is poisoned by toxic chemical dumps. Health deteriorates, lives are lost.