“In all that is possible there is nothing more wondrous than what is.” - Al-Ghazali

I am disappointed in myself.

Last week, I watched the front door of my apartment building swing open. A couple walked in, carrying houseplants. The pink moving truck was parked outside.

Five years ago, I would have jogged up to them, introduced myself, and welcomed them to the building. But no longer.

As they moved boxes toward the cladded elevator, I walked past them, head-down, without saying a word.

This is not who I want to be. And a few years back I wasn’t!

I organized two “meet your neighbor” events on the roof of our Brooklyn apartment building. I put up posters, recruited co-hosts, planned the food and drinks, and knocked on doors to make personal invitations. About a third of the building showed up. A real win!

I was such an eager neighbor that on at least two occasions I introduced myself to guys walking through the lobby—not realizing that they were there to deliver sushi.

So, what’s changed? Why can’t I now name a single person living on our floor?

Is it that I want to live anonymously and be left alone? No. Definitely not. (Though I’m learning that some move to a big city for this very reason.)

Is it that I am just an asshole? Sometimes, sure. But not all the time!

Or am I tired of being the one to host the building meetup? That’s part of it, yes. Community leadership fatigue is real. But there’s more to it than that.  

I think it’s also about a lack of shared expectations. I suspect that folks in my building think very differently about what we owe each other as neighbors. Indeed, do we “owe” each other anything at all?!

My friend Jack Holloway suggested that I’m living with an expectation of a Kantian categorical imperative: the sense that there is a right way for things to be. Neighbors should introduce themselves, should seek each other out socially—even just a little, and should be on hand to help in times of need. To live without making these efforts is surely wrong. Especially when we know from hurricanes and pandemics how massively important geographic proximity becomes in times of crisis!

But for Nietzsche, this categorical imperative is not only wrong, it is “dangerous to life.” For him, every person should be a law unto themselves. We should each choose our moral commitments for ourselves and not simply melt into the prescribed principle that Kant fanboyed over.

And Nietzsche certainly seems to have won out in my corner of Brooklyn. 23% of Americans don’t know any of their neighbors. Even among those who know at least some, a majority (58%) say they never meet them for parties or get-togethers.

Sadly, I’m now drifting toward those statistics myself.

Trying to create a “law unto myself” to keep organizing meet-your-neighbor events got kind of depressing when others didn’t pick up what I was putting down. How can we hold onto a relational worldview when everyone around us seems to be a Nietzschean individualist?

I may be making too much of all this, but I find myself asking—is it wrong to feel like I am owed something by my neighbors? Just as I, too, owe my neighbors the same.

Luckily, this week is the one week in the year where millions of people do the unthinkable: walk up to neighbors’ houses, knock on the door and say hello.

Well, they’ll say “Trick or treat!”—but the point stands.

Halloween is one of the last in-tact social scripts that invites neighbors to connect. We all know we owe the kids who knock on our door some candy.

And isn’t that a wonderful thing?