One evening a couple of weeks ago, around 9pm, my husband and I decided to go for a walk.
Our building is quite secured, needing a fob to access almost any door except for the ones to actually leave the building – ultimately stopping anyone from truly getting anywhere within the building without a fob.
We get down the stairs and go to open the door to the garage, when we realize the fob isn’t working.
We tried multiple times, and even attempted using the app which said ‘system connection failed’.
Thinking that maybe it was just that door, we walked around to the front of the building, and, once again were not able to get in.
A woman comes to the door to let us in and tells us that it wasn’t just this one door that wasn’t working – none of them in the whole building were!
It took us a second to really understand what that meant, but ultimately, we were trapped in the lobby!
Not even the door to the elevator was opening.
Another neighbor rolled in, and we told him what happened.
Then another neighbor and same reaction.
When trying to think of a plan, one of our neighbors suggested that, although we couldn’t open the elevator from the main floor, if someone called it from another floor, when it came down to the lobby, it would open up allowing us to get on.
Genius! The only problem was that no one knew anyone upstairs.
Finally one man said that his wife was upstairs and that he would call her.
We were all relieved and joked a bit about the circumstance.
Once the elevator came down, we cheered and all hopped on like little kids.
Turns out, 3 of the neighbors we were with lived on the same floor as us.
We all got off the elevator and it felt like a small train of humans going down the hallway together. As each neighbor passed their place, we said good night and waved them off until finally it was just us and 1 of our neighbors who happened to live just across the hall from us.
He had a friend over, so as we were saying good night at our door, the four of us began chatting.
We talked about many different topics – quality of life, policy, basic human needs, but the one that stuck out to me the most was the need for community, especially in a time like right now.
As we were chatting, I had an almost out of body experience – seeing the four of us in third person, four souls who had never met, laughing and talking. Simple actions that are so needed, yet is so hard to come about.
We’ve been living in this building for 7 months and that was the first time we had a genuine conversation with any of our neighbors!
Truthfully, I didn’t even know he lived there – I don’t know who lives in any of the apartments around me!
You see faces every so often, you say hello, and sometimes not even that.
When we were in the lobby, there were 4 different neighbors – all we needed was for one person to text or call a neighbor and ask them to send the elevator, but none of us knew anyone except for the one man who’s wife was thankfully upstairs.
What happened to the idea of knowing your neighbors – what about the scenes in the movies where the neighbor goes next door to ask for flour or for sugar? What happened to moving in somewhere and immediately introducing yourself to your neighbors?
How ironic is it that in a world in so much need of community, we’ve grown so far from actually even knowing what that means.
Social media, technology, television, streaming platforms – all competing for our attention. Have social skills really gone that far down on the priority list?
I do feel really grateful for having experienced all of my childhood and most of my teens without social media. To see how it has taken over today is quite impactful.
But I feel like perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to really fathom what it is about today that makes it so hard to simply walk up to someone and introduce myself. We used to do it as kids, why do we have so many walls up now? Why does it get in our heads about it being “awkward” or “weird”? Especially when now is probably when we need those connections more!
What caused us to lose the art of connection?
Does it really take an elevator mishap to actually look at someone in their eyes? To actually have a conversation with a neighbor?
Let’s not continue feeding into that.
Let’s introduce ourselves to our neighbors, let’s look at them in the eyes and say hello.
Let’s give a compliment to a stranger and actually mean it.
We all need community, now more than ever – let’s make it start with us.
As always, sending you lots of love <3
Until next time,
Cristina Marie
