It was August when we moved in, and the first storm hit in December. The snowfall wasn’t too heavy – it was shoreline Connecticut, after all. Maybe 4 inches. But it was our first time living back in New England for more than a decade, and our four tweens were ecstatic.
After shoveling our own driveway, we decided to clear the drive of the house two doors down, where a kind, elderly couple lived. It took our four kids maybe ten minutes… and Mr. and Mrs. Chapman were delighted when they emerged to discover their clear drive.
The shoveling was the start of a sweet relationship that included their buying Halloween candy especially for our kids and launching a Halloween visit ritual. Our dropping baked goods off from time to time; Mrs. Chapman leaving hand-drawn art in our mailbox once or twice; and the occasional snow shoveling. They didn’t need us to shovel (he had a snow blower and often used it), but they sure didn’t mind. More than once they commented on how nice it was to know a family with young kids on the street. They hadn’t known the children who’d lived in our house before us… and knowing us mattered to them.
But this is not a post about good deeds or hospitality. It’s one about how and where we spend time and attention in relationships.
Caring for the Chapmans, even in the casual way we did, was meaningful to them – and also to us. Knowing who your neighbors are isn’t just a nice thing; it’s a key factor in human flourishing. It betters us.
All relationships are not equal, and we aren’t equally responsible for everyone in the world. This much we all know. But to whom do we have responsibility, and how can we know? This question leaves us moderns scratching our heads.
The answers come through natural law: the millennia-old set of universal truths, common to all humans, that’s discovered through reason. It tells us that we have a duty to attend to the needs of those with whom we’re in direct relationship because we share basic goods (life, health, knowledge, friendship) with them. This is generally family: our spouse and children, if we have them, and also often our parents and siblings. After family, those for whom we have responsibility form concentric circles around us, moving out through friendships, work and neighborhood relationships, and our community. These are the people whom, most of all, we must tend.
But why? Why care (for example) for the the Chapmans? For two reasons.
The first is that humans are embodied – we have bodies and dwell literally “here and now.” We actually have three parts – body, spirit (animal nature), and mind (rational nature), intertwined and integrated. Being embodied means where we physically reside and what we do with our bodies matters. We lived close by – shared the same curb, viewed each other’s shrubs, passed on the road. Our pursuing goods (or not) affected them, and their pursuing goods (or not) affected us – our goods were in common. This is what is: we physically resided alongside each other.
The second is that a human person is herself a basic good. This means that anytime you act to advance another person’s good, it’s reasonable and can lead to flourishing. The people with whom I’m in direct contact are the ones I know. The Chapmans stand before me in the flesh, so I know definitively when they lack basic goods. I can discover firsthand if Mrs. Chapman is ill and bring her soup (advancing her health) or if she lacks information that I can provide (advancing her knowledge). But I can discover the needs of a person I don’t know only second-hand through an intermediary. So I can’t know with the same certainty if and how help I send reaches that person. Because of this, we prioritize meeting the needs of people in our lives we personally know. And knowing and tending to them makes not just individuals but also communities stronger. (The principle is called ‘subsidiarity.’)
The further out I move among my concentric circles, the more my responsibilities diminish. I have a greater duty to tend to my son’s needs than those of a kid on the soccer team I coach, but more for the kid I coach than one on another town team who I don’t know. Yet I have more responsibility for that young soccer player – or a neighbor on my street I’ve never met – than a stranger on the far side of town… or, more so, an impoverished person in another country.
This is where it gets dicey.
In a world hyperconnected by the internet and where every need is blared through the 24/7 news and social media, we can get confused. “Global citizenship” is not a replacement for civic responsibility in our home communities. Will my $20 make more of a difference to a starving child in Africa whom I don’t know (and can’t truly know is receiving the assistance in the spirit I intend it) than to the foster kid who’s staying with the Jones family in our town? Maybe. And either way, it certainly is good to care about the needs of the least fortunate people in our world. But a voluntary act of charity is different in type than a personal investment in the welfare of a community member; they are not equivalent.
Bottom line: it’s not reasonable for me to spend my time and energy on global needs if I’m ignoring the folks in my back yard (or town or, most of all, home). They are the ones to whom I truly bear responsibility.
We moved to another state a year ago, and we see the Chapmans no more. Now we have new neighbors, new town connections, a new school community that comprise our concentric circles. (Of course the circle of family and longstanding IRL friendships remain, no matter where those individuals are located.) Our duty to share common goods with them replaces the duty we previously had with the Chapmans and our other neighbors.
So. Here’s to shoveling the new nearby driveways as we should, and looking out for other ways that we promote – and receive from – the common goods that crop up all around us.