“weej goan allemoal, oh, oh, oh, allemoal met de neus umhoeg.”
If you’d have walked by my house last week, you would have heard these lyrics floating from my attic window. Rowwen Hèze is a Limburg band and a stark contrast from my usual playlist, comprised mainly of Taylor Swift songs. Rowwen Hèze is the favourite band of my neighbour Michel, who spent two days helping me to paint my attic.
I am currently in the midst of divorce, and home renovation has been a coping mechanism – gradually transforming this home into “my” home and focusing on new memories to be made. When my neighbour Michel offered, for the fifth time, to help me with my next home project, and when more and more neighbours began expressing concern at how “stretched thin” I was looking, I finally allowed myself to accept help.
Despite my initial discomfort at accepting help, we ended up having a wonderful two days together. Not only did I discover his favourite bands (adding a few new songs to my playlist in the process), but I also learned a lot about his family and his childhood. As we painted, he also listened to me pour my heart out about my anxieties and sorrows, and told me assuredly: “Alles komt goed.” While he unfortunately could not take all my pain away, I did feel a lot lighter at the end of our project.
There is a wealth of research to support my experience, showing that having good neighbours is related to higher aspects of well-being (like happiness and life satisfaction), to lowers aspects of ill-being (like loneliness and anxiety), and provide an important source of emotional and practical support. Further, if you’re someone like me, who has difficulty accepting help, this can be useful to keep in mind: Having good neighbours not only benefits you, but being a good neighbour does a lot of good for the other person, too, and contributes to the overall well-being of the entire community.
I am so happy with the finished product, not only because of how great my guestroom looks, but also because it will always be a reminder of how someone was willing to spend their precious time and energy simply to help make things a little easier for me in these difficult times. And that feels so good.
Jessica Alleva, assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience