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Deep down, people want to have meaningful relationships with other people, right? Unless you’re a hermit or in the witness relocation program, I feel like the universal answer is a resounding, “Right!” So, why don’t we have meaningful relationships with the people who are the most geographically accessible, our neighbors? I mean, look… they’re right there next to you! Walk 30 yards, “ding dong,” start talking.

So… I’m supposedly this big proponent of neighborhoods and “bringing community back to the community.” I preach it all the time, and I get on to people for not wanting anything to do with their neighbors. One day, a few weeks ago, I was complaining to my mother about something silly one of my neighbors was doing (driving through my yard). I successfully described all my feelings on the subject. My mom asked me if I had talked with them about it, but I had to tell her, “No,” because I didn’t really know them very well. What I said next was one of those things that you can’t believe you just said but, introspectively, you’re glad you did. “I don’t want to get to know any of these people!”

So there it is. I don’t really want to get to know any of my neighbors. Turns out, I’m just like all my friends and family who say the same thing.

What is “getting to know” someone? Now that I think about it, getting to know someone is actually pretty hard. I picture sitting down with someone over coffee, 2 or 3 hours blocked out, and drilling them with questions so that I can “get to know” them. I think of going on a first date with a girl and feeling like I need to “get to know” her so I can decide if I want to ask her out again. This act of “getting to know” someone sounds really intense, time consuming, almost exhausting. No wonder I don’t want to go through the same process with any of my neighbors!

I may not want to devote that kind of energy to the people around me, and they probably don’t want to either. We don’t have time. We’re busy with work, church, kids, you name it. But I do have time to hop online and update my Facebook status. You know, if one of my neighbors wrote an article in the newspaper about our neighborhood, I would buy that newspaper, read it, and feel connected to that neighbor… no coffee, hours on end, or question/answer sessions. If one of my neighbors hosted a block party, I would be there, and I would feel connected to the people at the party. If the guy down the street reported a crime on some online service (ahem), I would read it, respond to it somehow, and feel connected to that guy. Get enough of those connections going, and I might start feeling like a real neighbor.

My point: Regardless of what people say, everybody yearns for connections and community. We may not be willing put a bunch of energy into forcing relationships into existence, but they would love to let them happen naturally. Hey! Wait a sec… we’re building a web tool that helps that happen by putting neighborhoods online! What a coincidence.

Our tag line gets to live another day: “MyNeighborhood.Com: Bringing COMMUNITY back to the Community.”