Cluster without Fluster
and where prevention eases tension

By Roy Zazeraj

" My mother used to say there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. She's now in a maximum security twilight home in Australia." Dame Edna Everage

Ever met the neighbours? Do you subscribe to the view that extending a hand of neighbourliness only invites trouble, and worse - obligations? When last did you even nod to the people who live adjacent - the "friends" who own the other half of your common walls or garden hedges?

Minding our own business is increasingly common, but not without negative consequences. After the "September 11" atrocity, when there was a spontaneous upsurge of community spirit, Americans noted that on average they had not seen their neighbours for six years! Yes, its a sad tendency of modern living that the closer we live to other people, the more emotionally remote we tend to become. In a world where the middle and upper classes strive for meaning and self-actualisation, we still have high (and increasing) needs for basic security. For this reason, among others, we move closer together - in modern laagers against a hostile world.

And yet, being closer physically does not necessarily equate to being closer in terms of friendships or community spirit. If anything, our "personal space" feels invaded, and we begin to erect social-emotional barriers to protect that space. Just witness the typical behaviour of people in a lift. The "space invaders" are the people all around us, not some aliens from another planet. So we begin to isolate ourselves in an increasingly congested world. Allied to this is the tendency to become hypercritical of anyone or anything remotely different to ourselves and our espoused values. My late mother had an old saying up on her wall, reading " All the world's queer, save thee and me, and even thee's a little queer." (Note that this was from an era when "queer" had a different meaning!)

Then again, we shouldn't have to be the best of friends, share identical values, or live in each other's pockets, in order to get along civilly. We do have a clear set of common interests. These range from the protection of our physical and financial property to mutual respect of our rights to peaceful co-existence (and just plain looking out for each other!).

Recognising these facts is probably the first step towards preventing stress and stressful situations with neighbours. The successful handling of conflict starts with preventing it in the first place. So lets focus on this before delving into how best to handle conflict when it does occur.

In the next issue, we explore the status of what Stephen Covey has called "emotional bank accounts" (EBAs). We will apply the idea to our neighbours. Look around you. Are your EBAs showing positive or negative balances? Do you take the trouble to make regular deposits to reduce the chances of conflict arising at all?

Those neighbours may be different, strange or even difficult, but it's certainly worth getting on, given all the potential benefits.