Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear, as the saying goes. But how often is this the truth? We live in a media driven, social media society. If someone makes a meme about it, it must be true. If Fox or CNN spews it, it’s the gospel. Despite of how many times something is shared, what about those things you know for yourself to be different or to be true?

For a moment, I’d like to dispel the belief that we as a community, no longer care about one another. Our ancestors would make us believe that when they grew up, everyone knew everyone, and that the village raised the kids. Popular belief now is that, there is no village. The world has it that we can’t trust anyone with our kids and every man (or woman) for himself.

I grew up like this so I’m not speaking from anything I don’t know. But now that I have my own kids, I plead the fifth. Now that I have my own family living in our own chosen neighborhood, I challenge all of these antidotal sayings.

I live in a community that consists of about 80 plus homes. When we moved into this neighborhood, it was half the size. Lots were still being sold and houses were going up. In 5 short years, we are almost at 100% capacity. There was a time when I knew many of the neighbors but not so much now. But we are still a tight-knit, diverse group of families. I’d say the neighborhood is predominantly white with about 20% black and 5% Asian descent maybe.

At the end of the day, we all are one big somewhat happy family. We have community events that consists of holiday gatherings in the clubhouse, crafting events at individual homes, parades, etc. We have a lot of fun. Babysitters throughout, dog walkers or even sitters, party planners, etc. We collect donations during the holidays for our city’s men and women in blue. Provide food and coat donations for local shelters and so much more.

Contrary to popular belief, we watch out for each other. If I miss some important news, my neighbor across the street would keep me informed. Her son would bring our garbage can to the house when he grabbed up theirs. When my kids needed some additional swim lessons, they would meet a young girl from the high school’s swim team at our pool. She lived about 7 houses down from us. Her sister has even babysat for us.

I can recall one day my son took sick at school. We have a great school but before the school got a chance to reach me, I received a couple of text, Facebook inbox, voicemail, and a smoke signal from neighborhood parents that saw him and knew he wasn’t feeling well. One day my daughter accidentally took the bus home instead of going to after-school care. Luckily my husband was home. But afterwards, several parents in the neighborhood approached us to be sure we knew they are usually home and if that were to happen again, the kids had somewhere to go.

And just here recently, last night to be exact, my son took sick. Ironically, a neighbor friend called to see if my daughter could join her daughter for a train ride. So while we took a trip to the ER with our son that last a full day of work causing us to be there past 3am; our daughter was sound asleep at our neighbor’s house knowing none-the-difference. She had dinner with them and a great morning. I literally walked down the street to pick her up the next morning after getting some good sleep. Goodness we were so tired from the night before but thank God, it was only the stomach flu and not appendicitis. And there has been a time before when my daughter took sick and instead of having our son in the ER all night, we dropped him off with neighbors.

I’ve said all of this to say: people can be trusted, people do still care about one another, the village still exists. The families I mentioned are great but there are so many more. My daughter was at a sleepover a week ago in the neighborhood. We have several houses our kids have stayed at. We consider these friends, family. But we wouldn’t have ever been able to call on them, if we were never open to the idea that there are still some good people in this world.

Not everyone is out to harm us…despite of what we see.

Thanks for your attention. Remember you are your own competition.

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