“Good fences make good neighbors” is a proverb from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Fences. It raises issues about what is fenced in and fenced out.
The issue is relevant to current discussions because accounts of territorial disputes fill our media. Encroachment of a person’s perceived personal space on roadways leads to confrontation and violence. Disputes about property lines leads to conflict and shootings. Territorial disputes between gangs, groups, and individuals lead to destruction and occasional mob actions. New neighbors with different appearance, speech patterns, and customs arrive among us, and people are perplexed about how to respond.
A persuasive argument can be made that good fences are necessary for maintenance of civil society. Certainly, having clearly defined property lines with official survey stakes are necessary if only to know for what property you bear responsibility. We lived in our current house for more than three decades without any difficulty having no clearly established property lines or fences. When we had the opportunity to purchase an adjacent wooded property, we had to have the property lines established in order to know what we were buying. It meant determining exactly what was our stewardship. Ownership of property involves responsibilities as well as rights. When a tree falls across Dry Branch Creek, we need to know who is responsible for the clean-up. Our insurance company requires clarity about liability risks. A long list of potential responsibilities exists.
Our near neighbors agree with a revision of Frost’s proverb. “Good neighbors make fences unnecessary.”
Even though surveyor’s stakes are at the edges of our property, we pay little attention to them, and no fences or unnatural obstructions set limits. One of our neighbors mows a large part of our property. Their grandkids and others from the neighborhood feel free to use our property for entertainment and exercise or to pick mushrooms.
The values of the trees on our wooded property help preserve good air for our community while surrounding us with changing beauty through every season. Strangers drive through our neighborhood to enjoy the beauty.
You can make a list of actions you can take to become a good neighbor.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As other proverbs interpret the saying, don’t do to anyone what you would not have done to you.
Lean across the imaginary dividing line to engage in calm and positive conversations with neighbors. Don’t approach them with a gun.
Listen carefully so that you will understand your neighbors, their hopes, problems, and abilities. Don’t approach a conversation to complain or argue.
Appreciate any good qualities and goals that surface from the conversation. Don’t focus on negative aspects of the other person or gossip about them.
Find ways to care for the property of the neighborhood in cooperative ways that will manifest cooperative stewardship.
Finally, if it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Raymond Brady Williams, Crawfordsville, LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities emeritus, contributed this guest column.
