We have lived in the same beautiful bushside neighbourhood for 18 years. We came here because it was inexpensive and close to a train station. But we stayed because of the people. Every day I’m reminded of how much goodness there is in the people around me. This is not just a misty-eyed sentiment, but manifested with deliberate acts of kindness and humility. From restocking the food-bank to rescuing flying foxes, someone steps up week after week. Noone goes looking for credit or keeps track of favours. This is inspiration, right next door.
I could easily fill pages with specific deeds of the dozens of active community members I have had the good fortune to meet, but to honour their privacy I have instead consolidated some of the stand-out acts in the poem below.
Home ground heroes
Floods, festivals and fortune brings,
our neighbours together for greater things.
Care happens here without a plan,
passed quietly from hand to hand.
Food left out where trust is king,
bread-runs, books, the simplest things.
Eggs, honey, fruit at gates,
no score kept, no debt that waits.
Goats and geese where lawns once were,
bananas and bees together stir.
Soil rebuilt, the hum of more,
our village learning what it’s for.
Some that mend what others miss,
mowers, decks, a fence, a fix.
Knives made sharp, old metal saved,
nothing useful left to waste.
Platypus, koalas, roos and deer,
a fox and even dingo near.
Give cause for keeping our creek neat,
taken up by villagers week by week.
When animals falter or wander far,
on the road or bush or yard.
Some kind soul steps right in,
showing care where luck ran thin.
And then October comes to leave its mark,
and joy comes spilling, from house to park.
Lights and laughter, careful fright,
each street glowing one shared night.
Not just for kids, or those who parent still,
but door by door, candy baskets fill
Some bring magic by pure choice,
grown kids gone, yet still a voice.
None of this is rare or loud.
That’s the trick that makes me proud.
A better world, not far away,
but right here in the village, day by day.
How does this help to live more with less?
A community working together provides an abundance of localised services. Some of these offer obvious cost savings, others are less direct. Here’s some ways we have benefited from the warmth and generosity in our neighbourhood:
- More time with and deeper relationships with friends
- Reduced travel costs with friends and services in walking distance
- Assistance with care of our gardens and animals while away
- Sharing and trading of excess produce and products, especially clothes, toys and furniture
- Free or inexpensive child-care leading to meaningful “aunty” type relationships
- Physical assistance with moving heavy things
- Emotional support and counsel with mixed aged friends
- Sharing of tools, vehicles, knowledge and consumables
- Access to machinery and tradespeople free or reduced cost
- Ever greater sense of trust and security, should an emergency call for it
- Ride-sharing opportunities and group motivational benefits
Writing this makes me worry that I’m commodifying a set of human experiences. It feels wrong in a way to list out how I have benefited and I feel an urge to defend. Such is human nature, to justify our position. Yet we have benefited by engaging in the local community in this way and so we should. Living as we do has played an important role in affording to give as generously as we do to others less materially fortune. So has the community. Provided there is reciprocation, everyone benefits.
Together we all get a little more out of life with less and make our little bit of the world better in the process.