Do you know who your neighbors are?

Despite record sustained gun sales since Obama was elected, people in our country are freakishly frightened about everything, including who might be living next door.  It seems antithetical that fear would be inversely proportional to the number of guns owned, but from here that’s what it looks like.  People are fearful of the Liberals, or Conservatives, depending on what side we imagine ourselves.  We are afraid of other religions and even denominations praying to our same God.  We are fearful of people wearing turbans, or berkas, or veils, or people with different colored skin, or traditions.  Fear in America has reached a crescendo, some calling it paranoia. 

I for one refuse to be afraid, and if owning a gun makes me more fearful, then I won’t have it.  I refuse to believe that just because someone prays to a different God, or none at all, they can’t be trusted to do the right thing.  I will not avoid people just because they fit in an imagined box with a label that some filthy talk show host spews about day-after-day.

Such labels divide us, and when we buy into it we give our power away.  Divide and conquer works just as well today as when Julius Caesar said it around 20BC, and if we march off to the drumbeat of fear, no good can come.  The people that use such labels know that there is not a line drawn in the sand that divides good people from bad people, or good neighbors from bad neighbors, but our collective fear is making them rich and more powerful.

My neighbors are solidly good people that want better for their kids than they have. My neighbors work hard and pay taxes and try to improve the community in their own way. So I refuse to wonder if my neighbors are conservative, or liberal.  I won’t be afraid if they are of another religion that our preacher warns us about. 

My neighbors are from all ranges of the political and religious landscape, and have just as diverse socio and economic views.  And even though we disagree on some things, we're still friends and supportive neighbors first. 

We know who our neighbors are, because we invite each other into our homes.  Try it, and watch the fear slip away!