There were two posts on CougarBoard recently where a board member shared an experience he had in his neighborhood that exemplifies the importance and power of loving your enemies. I am posting some excerpts from the posts here.
Post 1 - Question for the legal minded
[We live on] a semi affluent street in So Cal. ... We have lots of older quieter neighbors. Professionals, business owners etc. Last month a super rich family buys a 850K house cash and puts their son in it. ... The son is mid 20s and is a pro dirt bike rider.
The house is on the other side of the street so I don't see or hear him much, but the families that live on that end are some friends of ours. To put it mildly he is terrorizing the neighborhood. The police have been to his house no less than 30 times this month. Sadly he is doing it at this point to be mean. He plays music at [deafening] sound at ALL hours of the night. Drives erratically endangering kids and old folks. He uses the most foul mean and terrible language at everyone, and I mean everyone he deals with.
At this point it's not my problem. But I'm concerned he will start running off good people. Any suggestions?
His family is uber wealthy and apparently pretty defensive of him. Apparently they sued his school district after he berated his teacher in high school so they may be pretty defensive about their son.
Post 2 - Return and report: don't judge a book by its cover
On Friday night I got a text from one of the neighbors soliciting money to start a legal fund to go after the new neighbor. I told her I wanted some time to think about it and didn't think I was ready to get involved at that level.It is important to remember to be kind to everyone. Give people the benefit of the doubt and try to see things from their perspective. A little bit of patience goes a long way.
That night our kids made Christmas cookies. My mother in law coincidentally sent us the light the world challenge to light he world of an enemy. Like i mentioned previously, I've had no issues with the dude, but the problem has gotten pretty bad for the neighborhood as a whole. So my wife and I make a plate of cookies, grab one of our Christmas cards and walk down to the guys house. After I knocked I heard a very defensive voice on the other side asking who was there. To be honest I was a little nervous because I was now in his world and I know he's a gun enthusiast and from what I'd been told "mentally unstable."
After he answers we give him the cookies and card and everything about him changed. Long story short he ends up coming down to our house and played cards ... until almost midnight. ...
Turns out the dude is really normal. He is a three tour Iraq and Afghanistan marine vet, college grad, full time electrical engineer with a 13 year old very well behaved son that he has 100% custody of.
Clearly he lacks some maturity and he's lashing out in retaliation against the neighbors for calling the cops on him everyday. It's sad because he's doing it because he feels like everyone is treating him like an outcast. Since he moved in not one neighbor came to introduce themselves to him or welcome him to the neighborhood. They only responded by calling the cops instead of just going over and talking to him.
He's mostly to blame in the situation, but it's interesting to hear the other side of the story. It's also sad to see the people who waged war on this guy are supposedly the more Christian/Mormon RS president bishop types, but never acted even a little bit Christlike toward a guy who just looked different from day one.
Almost all the info I'd gotten up to the point I met the guy came from other neighbors who created a mob mentality against [him].
I started advocating for the guy yesterday and surprise, everyone's cooler heads prevailed and now everyone just wants to get along and everyone apologized for acting like jerks to each other.
Last night he came over and gave me a hug and thanked me for reaching out to him because he was pretty depressed that everyone had treated him so poorly before they gave him a chance. Granted he could have done a lot to fix the problem. Pretty crazy what happens when we just go out and talk to our neighbors.
Source: CougarBoard
