I pass a house on my walks with a “ROB ME!” sign in the front yard often.
OK, so there isn’t an actual sign, but newspapers piling up on the walkway as good as advertise that no one’s home. If I didn’t live so far away, I’d offer the house dwellers to collect their papers while they’re traveling.
According to new findings from the Pew Research Center, my willingness to do that hardly makes me special:
76% of U.S. adults say they’d water plants or bring in mail for out-of-town neighbors. And the majority of trusting folks say it’s extremely or very likely their neighbors would reciprocate. Distrusting types, not so much.
Here, Pew reports that trusting individuals are 20 percentage points more likely to think that their neighbors would water their plants or bring in mail than “distrusters,” or folks who say that most people can’t be trusted.
Trusting neighbors, activate! There are distrusters to convert! 🙂
“Trust is the oil that lubricates the frictions of daily life,” Pew says. The report adds that trust makes it easier for us to work together and “overall levels of social trust seem to go hand in hand with many features of a healthy society.”
Now here’s where I might be milking things too much, but..
What if we used collecting mail for neighbors not only as a proxy for trust but a low-hanging pathway towards trust?
I wonder of the 76% of U.S. adults who say they’d water plants or bring in mail for neighbors, how many actually DO it?
My neighbor “T” does. She’s a package angel. Recently, she got a workout lugging my fave workout devise (personal trampoline) to my apartment door from the mail room where packages sometimes grow legs and walk away.
Over the past year, in fact, porch pirates reportedly stole 58 million packages valued at over $12 billion. This is a friction that costs many people in time, effort and potentially package replacement or insurance fees.
Since building trust involves communicating openly, showing empathy and keeping our promises, picking up mail seems a perfect package deal (ha ha) for creating conditions for us as neighbors to connect better.
People’s packages are getting swiped as is it, so there’s a good chance that a neighbor will say yes if you convey an empathetic offer to spare them the pain of theft by picking up their deliveries if and when you see them sitting out.
But the trust grows in the follow through.
There’s also a chance that some folks will distrust your motives. A low-hanging pathway to trust with them might start with smiling or waving consistently.
But mostly, I think social trust starts with us trusting ourselves—heeding our intuitions or inner promptings about how to connect in the moment.
P.S. If you’re intrigued about my trampoline, here’s the one I got to make it until I’m reunited with my one in Atlanta. Different models offer a different kind of bounce. Cellercise and JumpSport sell good (but pricier) options.
Search “benefits of rebounding” and you might want one too. But don’t be lured by the lowest price. Your joints may pay the price for it.
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