Qualities of a good neighbor
When I think about my childhood years, I my first friends come to my mind, those who were the first people besides my family I got to know, who became my friends and grew up with me. Most of them were classmates, relatives and of course, neighbors. Neighbors are those people who share the street, block and fences with us. Their existence has always been taken for granted, and they haven’t been given the importance or attention that they deserve.
For some people, neighbors can mean troublesome or annoyance.” For others, neighbors are considered as relatives, and they enjoy having a good and close relationship with their neighbors. Of course, the opinions depend on personality of individuals, culture, type of housing (house or apartment), place (a big city, a small town, or the country) among others. But both points of view may come to an agreement when determining what makes a good neighbor?
In the first place, a good neighbor should be considerate. Knowing that you should treat others the way you expect to be treated is a quality that makes people respect boundaries ( physical, social and emotional). For instance, a neighbor who can tell when the noise of his stereo makes may bother the people next door, and is able to turn it down taking into consideration of his neighbors’ needs.
In the second place, being sympathetic is another charac teristic that a neighbor should have. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes makes you understand better the feelings of somebody who is in trouble, and consequently, offer appropriate help. An example could be a situation where you know that your neighbor divorced recently and is going through a hard time. Maybe you will be more understanding when you see her in a bad mood, and avoid an unnecessary conflict, because you can see the way she feels.
Finally, good manners and a polite way to address your neighbors can polish even the toughest relationship. When a neighbor is rude, even if we excuse him or her by saying, that’s the way he/she is, we feel a little rejected.
A nice smile or a œHello helps a lot to start a friendly conversation, and to avoid misunderstandings such as He never speaks to me, so he must be mad at me or something.” Manners do help to start friendships.
There are so many more characteristics that we could list, and there are many ways we could make a more accurate picture of the perfect neighbor we all want to have. But I guess the best way to edify our neighbors is by being good neighbors ourselves. We cannot demand others to do something for us that we cannot offer to do for them. We should stop complaining about what our neighbor always does that bothers us; we’d better start analyzing what we are doing to make the relationships with the people next door flourish. Let us start setting the example.
Neighbors are the people who live near us, and their behavior influences our daily life. Good neighbors can make us feel comfortable and give us many help, and everyone will benefit from a good relationship among neighbors.
In my point of view, these are three conspicuous aspects of the qualities of a good neighbor.
One of the most important characteristics of good neighbors is that they have a good living habit and are friendly to others. A person with bad habit will affect your daily life. For example, children are most likely to be influenced by bad neighbors and carry on bad habits. On the other hand, being friendly is also an important nature of good neighbors. If neighbors are unfriendly, they are hard to approach and difficult to get along with.
Another important aspect of good neighbors is that they should be willing to help others. In our daily life, emergency situations may occur, and we may encounter difficulties that cannot be resolved by ourselves. The quickest help we can get is probably from our neighbors. To some degree, neighbors are as important as relatives to us, because they could provide the immediate help. In the same way, a neighbor who likes to help others will get help in return. Help each others can form a friendly and harmonious relationship among the neighbors.
All in all, a good neighbor is someone who has a good living habit, is friendly and is willing to help others. Taking into account of all these factors, we may reach the conclusion that a good relationship among neighbors need the maintenance from us.
Speaking of the word ‘neighbor’, it arouses different responses among people. Some people may frown upon it, others might nod their heads at it with their wholehearted smile on their faces. No matter which category you belong to, as a person, especially as a person who has to live next to a neighbor, the concern on the qualities of a good neighbor is always a popular issue to bring about and to desire for. In my opinion, a good neighbor must be a friendly person, while at the same time, a person who is willing to offer help to you when you need the most.
As an important and fundamental quality of a good neighbor, she or he must be kind and nice. Neighbors are those persons we meet in every day life when we go in and out of the building. They are usually the people we meet at the very beginning of the day, and whom again we will encounter at the end of the day. A nice and sincere smile on their faces, or a simple ‘hello’ as a warm greeting on the way, may bring us a joyful mood for a start of a day. In a very same way, a caring ‘how was your day?’ on your way home might be treated as a big comfort on your tiredness at the end of your working day. As nice neighbors, they have provided us a very cordial living environment through their care and friendship.
Other than that, being able to help you out when it is necessary is also considered as a significant trait of a good neighbor. Through our entire lives, there are numerous difficulties or troublesome situations that we have to deal with. When those particular moments come into life, the first person come into our mind is often our best friend or one of the relatives. However, most of the time, they cannot be the real person who we can rely on at those hard times. We will soon realize they are either too far away or they are unavailable right now. We all have once had these similar experiences. Then here is the moment where good neighbors should begin to play their helpful roles so that we can immediately turn to them for help and useful advice for dealing and solving the emergency, and so that we do not have to lose our minds in trying to find everyone’s phone number.
These are the precious and indispensable qualities of good neighbors. They are friendly and nice, and they will always be there ready for you when you need someone’s help. Living with such a neighbor, you may start to sway at your old image of neighbor, and you may no longer frown upon that topic at the time we talk about it.
It seems, among so many qualities such as reliability, honesty, helpfulness, and patience, very difficult to prefer one to another because each of them has its unique advantages. Yet that does not mean that they are of the same weight to me. To be frank, I would prefer reliability and helpfulness.
Why I vote for reliability? I stand behind it because I can trust my neighbors only if they are reliable people. That makes me feel safe to associate with them. Imagine if your neighbor is not reliable, will you put your worries to rest to let your neighbor look after your children even when she offers to do so? Do you dare leave your key to your neighbor when she says she will keep it for you? Will you lend your car to her when your neighbor promises that she will return it within two hours? Obviously, reliability is not only a quality of a good neighbor, but also a quality of a good person, and it is the foundation of a good relationship.
Being helpful is another quality that I have chosen to illustrate here. A neighbor should be kind and helpful, because they live close to you, and you never know when you might need help. For example, when you go for a vocation, your neighbor can help you water the plants, and pick up the mail. It is always good when you know that if something happens, your neighbor is there to help.
Of course, other qualities such as honesty and patience are also important to some extent, but everybody has his or her own preferences. I chose reliability and helpfulness as the qualities of a good neighbor because reliability helps us develop a good relationship and helpfulness keeps the relationship remaining for a long time.
