Needing Neighbors

I recently came across an online article - in Macleans Magazine - about our increasing isolation from the people who live around us. We need people - connections in our community - to live a long, healthy life, according to the article.

Do I live in a more isolated community now than I did when I was young? I wondered. I don't think so... Not if memory serves me right.

When I think about our street in Red Deer (where I lived from ages 7 to 12), I remember that we knew the neighbors next door and across the street. But none farther away. As kids, we knew families with children our age, whom we played with. Ditto for Kelowna in our De Hart Avenue home.


The same holds true today in the suburban community we live in now.

There may be fewer stay-at-home moms these days than there were in the 1950s and 1960s. But nowadays some of my neighbors have home offices. (They may feel lonely and disconnected!)
On our street, there are plenty of retirees who chat when they see each other. When my children were young and I was at home alone with them, these same retirees all went out to work. I remember feeling isolated, especially in winter.



I recall staring out the window one particularly cold, bleak day, knowing I was the only one at home on the street. Who would I call in an emergency?















Perhaps there is more isolation and less willingness to make an effort to meet neighbors in the downtown core of large cities. But I know that my daughter, in her downtown Toronto apartment, knows all the people in the three apartments in her building, even though they move in and out annually. And last winter, when a pipe froze and her building had no water for a day, she ventured next door with a bucket, and found a neighbor more than willing to give them water.

Perhaps it's a myth to believe that we were friendlier and more connected back in the day.

The only group of people I know who are truly isolated are the elderly who no longer get out of the house much. They no longer drive, so many sit indoors all day. I hardly ever saw one of my neighbors, after her husband died, because she rarely left her house. When her daughter insisted she move into an assisted-living apartment as she was no longer steady on her feet, she was angry. Her life is better now - she will admit. She has exercise classes to keep her walking, as well as other activities in her building. She doesn't have to cook - and at mealtime, she has people to talk to. But she still misses the home she lived in for 55 years - even though her quality of life there wasn't what it had been before.