It occurred to me while walking just last night that the neighborhood had snuck back up on me again. For a few years there it felt isolated and suspicious, and angry at the state of the world. Or maybe that was always me, reacting to the trend in national politics, the trend towards oligarchs, the trend toward meanness and selfishness and isolationism.

The world is a complicated mess—surely it is, but our world, the one that we live in every day, need not be. Community is the people who surround us. The people who knew us ten or twenty years ago and still choose to ask how we’re doing now. It occurred to me that the neighborhood is full of people who are just trying to make a go at this one precious life just like I am.

It took a lot of walks with the pup to lift the fog of perception away. A dog is an invitation to shatter the cone of silence that hovers over people in this strange new world we live in. Polite nods become long conversations, which in turn flip the script from divisiveness to connectedness. And soon it feels like the place we were meant to be at this time in our lives.

They say all politics are local. We all just want to be heard. We all just want to be accepted for who we are. Well, that requires a reciprocal investment in hearing others out, and accepting them for who they are too. The pendulum swings abruptly one direction to the next and back again over time. And all the while, we still have to live with one another. We might as well enjoy each other’s company.