- 12% of people don’t know a single one of their neighbors.
- We spend more time alone and at home than at any other time in our history.
- Many people would rather ask AI for help than ask a colleague.
- Hosting doesn’t have to be extravagant or expensive.
The 2026 midterms have thrown the “Love Thy Neighbor” political coalition into a national spotlight, fueled by the many Americans who are exhausted by the politics of division and ready to embrace a kinder message of change at the ballot box. But it’s important to remember that actually building relationships with our neighbors takes skill, not platitudes, which is why we all need to get started with neighboring in our own lives, right away.
Are we out of practice in social relationship building?
I promise, someone who voted differently from you can still be a good neighbor to you and check your mail while you’re out of town.
Americans are woefully out of practice in all sorts of social relationship-building. We spend more time alone and at home than at any other time in our history. Twelve percent of people do not know a single one of their neighbors. There’s been a radical decline in hosting, in the simple act of hospitality of having people in our homes. In 2023, only 4.1% of people were hosting or attending a gathering on any given weekend or holiday, a 35% decline from 20 years prior.
We can now work, shop and go to school without ever talking to a human person or leaving the comforts of our couch. The pandemic threw us even further out of practice, and generative AI chatbots are adding fuel to the fire of our isolation. A third of workers would rather ask AI for help than talk to a colleague.
Community building is something anyone can do
Fortunately, community building is a skill anybody can learn through practice. And being part of a “Love Thy Neighbor” Coalition will mean accepting that people will not agree with us 100% of the time. If we want a better world, we need to build both personal relationships and strategic alliances with people we may only agree with 75% or 50% of the time.
I promise, someone who voted differently from you can still be a good neighbor to you and check your mail while you’re out of town.
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Here are two simple ways to start building our relationships right away if we want real social change, not just slogans.
Join something. There’s an endless amount of digital entertainment at our fingertips, and tech companies have spent billions of dollars making social media addictive. The simplest antidote to this is to get out of our houses and start showing up for groups in person. Whether it’s a knitting club, a church, synagogue, or mosque, a pickleball league, or a volunteer group, pick something with a standing, regular meeting time and keep showing up, week after week.
Invite people over. There are a bunch of reasons we host people in our homes far less than we used to. With high grocery prices, demanding jobs and people feeling more spread thin than ever, who can pull off a dinner party?
But it’s time to put down Instagram-fueled expectations of four-course meals with matching party favors and start practicing what I call Deep Casual Hosting. It’s the idea that you make the superficial aspects of hosting more casual so you can go deeper on connection and do it more often. Think of menus you’d be serving your family anyway. Some of my favorites are pesto pasta with a Costco rotisserie chicken, takeout pizza, or Beyond burgers and air-fried french fries. Nothing that spikes your grocery budget or is so time-consuming to pull off that you never want to do it again, and your guests are too intimidated to reciprocate. This is a powerful way to build and deepen our relationships.
It’s important that we have high expectations for our leaders and demand that they deliver on their promises. But if we want “love thy neighbor” to be part of the fabric of our lives and our society, we have an important role to play, too. The government isn’t going to place a caring phone call when someone is having a hard time, drop off soup when someone’s sick, or offer to carpool. It’s our job to start neighboring.
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