As a rule, it’s preferable to get along with your neighbors. If you’re thinking of the neighbors strictly as the people who live in closest proximity to you, you’re shutting yourself off, and modern life offers way too many opportunities to do that as it is.
Okay, people normally don’t actively seek out extra occasions to involve other people in their business, and only a certifiable lunatic would actually attempt to strike up a friendship with every stranger they met in the city, but being neighborly doesn’t have to be that intimate.
Think about it, how often do you ever see the actual neighbors that live next to you? If your coming and going schedules are even in the same galaxy, you can catch each other at the door a couple of times a week and exchange pleasantries, but it’s still nice to know that there’s someone who might notice if flames starting shooting out your front door or something.
City living, by nature, is mostly an endless series of encounters with strangers, and the more you have to run around from place to place, the more strangers there are. But for however brief a time, these strangers, on the train, in an elevator, standing in line for coffee, or even at a Laundromat, are your neighbors.
You don’t have become best friends, or even invite anyone in, but life is simpler, and generally more pleasant when you can borrow a cup of sugar, or detergent, as the case may be, from the neighbors.
