Neighboring: Becoming Real and Feeling Loved And Getting More of What Matters Most

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you." Dale Carnegie

In the last blog, I wrote about the Velveteen Rabbit and becoming real. Most of you have read the book.

We remember how the Velveteen Rabbit did not become real by striving, impressing, or polishing himself into perfection. He became real because someone loved him — long enough, steadily enough, honestly enough — that the shiny parts wore off and something truer emerged. Becoming real is what happens when we are seen and when we dare to see.

This week, with Valentine’s Day hovering in the air, the question shifts: If becoming real requires love, how do we actually feel that love? And help others feel it? Including our spouses, friends, family, acquaintances, fellow human beings at large.

Because many of us are loved — and still carry an ache.

You can receive bouquets of flowers and still feel unknown. You can sit at a candlelit table and still feel miles apart. You can be surrounded by community and not feel fully seen. (I know this feeling from earlier in my life and it hurts. And the ways we go about trying to be more lovable and demand love from others hurts us.)

Before heading to our community meal last night, I listened to a podcast with Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis, authors of How to Feel Loved. I also flipped through the book. Their central insight stayed with me as I walked through the doors carrying name tags.

You don’t need to change yourself. You don’t need to fix the other person. You change the conversation.

That matters deeply to me this year because my word for the year is shaping up to be neighboring.

In a time when so much seems aimed at dividing us, neighboring feels like quiet resistance. Neighboring says: I will see you not as a category, not as a symbol, not as a slogan — but as a human being.

Lyubomirsky and Reis define feeling loved not as grand gestures, but as the experience of being understood, valued, and cared for in your inner world. Harry Reis’s decades of research show that what most predicts relationship satisfaction is what he calls perceived responsiveness — the sense that someone truly “gets” you.

And that feeling of being understood is linked not only to relational happiness but to better mental health, lower stress, and even longer life. Long-term studies, including the Harvard Study of Adult Development, have shown again and again that warm, responsive relationships are among, if not the strongest, predictors of well-being.

But here is the hopeful part.

We don’t wait for others to get their act together. We go first. (We go first with good intentions - not to impress, not to one-up, not to own the room.)

Not dramatically. Not with a grand confession. We start small. We ask a follow-up question. We show genuine interest. We stay in it for the long haul.

The authors describe five mindsets that create the kind of conversations where love becomes something we actually feel.

Sharing means allowing someone to see the real you — thoughtfully and honestly, without oversharing or hiding. It may be as simple as answering “How are you?” with one truthful sentence.

Listening-to-learn means giving your undivided attention not to reply, fix, or debate, but to understand. It is the simple, powerful follow up phrase after someone tells you something: “Tell me more.”

Radical curiosity refuses to flatten people into caricatures. It leans in with genuine interest in what makes someone uniquely themselves — their fears, quirks, hopes, contradictions.

Open-heart is the stance of warmth and concern for another’s well-being. It communicates, “I am for you.” It makes space for the other person’s humanity.

Multiplicity sees people as complex — a mixture of strengths and flaws, convictions and doubts. It resists the temptation to define someone by one symbol, one mistake, or one label.

As I stood in the community meal hall last night, I felt how easy it would be to get lost in logistics — setting tables, organizing name tags, cleaning up. But the real work was something else.

The real work was neighboring.

And then something beautiful and unexpected happened. It can go that way on some occasions. Many, maybe all, seemed to be neighboring almost naturally.

People who sometimes wear divisive identity symbols — the kind that can tighten some people’s bellies — sat down with others, used their good manners, picked up forks, and talked about grandchildren, football, health concerns, and recipes. In their own naturally good-hearted ways. they practiced sharing. They listened-to-learn. They stayed curious. They brought an open, caring heart. They allowed for people to have many dimensions.

The room softened.

Rueben Mayes, former Seahawks player, stopped by to support the community meal and community in general. His presence added a spark of delight, but what moved me most was not celebrity — it was the way conversation returned to the center.

Handshakes. Stories. Laughter. The work of love unfolding at plastic tables.

It struck me that these five mindsets are remarkably similar to compassion practice. In compassion circles, we also share honestly, listen deeply, stay curious, bring warmth, and remember our common humanity. The angle may differ slightly — compassion often begins with suffering, but both invite us to create spaces where people can be known and understood and cared about and…yes, loved and neighbored. And, again, it seems to not be all that new.

Much of this modern research echoes the timeless wisdom of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Show genuine interest. Listen more than you speak. Encourage others to talk about themselves. What once sounded like social advice is now backed by decades of psychological evidence linking responsiveness to happiness and health.

Perhaps compassion and love sometimes suffer from a branding problem. They can sound sentimental or ideological. But who objects to genuine interest? Who resists being truly heard? To having friends and neighbors?

This Valentine’s Day, romance will take center stage. And romance matters. But maybe the deeper invitation is this: expand the circle of love.

Romance becomes real when we risk one honest sentence.

Friendship becomes real when we say, “I’ve missed you,” and listen for the answer.

Parenting becomes real when we ask one more curious question before correcting. Work becomes more humane when we see the human being behind the role.

Community becomes possible when we treat one another as neighbors rather than opponents.

Becoming real is not about becoming flawless. It is about changing the conversations...entering them with warm-hearted, curious, good intentions to be... a neighbor, a friend, even a lover.

If you are not feeling loved this February, perhaps the answer is not more elaborate gestures. Set your intention around love or neighboring or compassion or friendship or being Real - pick your term. Then:

Go first.

Offer one true sentence.

Ask one more curious question.

Bring an open heart.

Hold complexity.

Stay in it for the long haul.

The Velveteen Rabbit became real because someone loved him long enough.

Maybe we become real the same way.

Through conversations where we practice neighboring — patiently, curiously, warmly — until love is not just present, but felt.

That is the good life!

How might we feel loved, journey together to The Good Life, especially this month of hearts and flowers by neighboring - being real and practicing the five mindsets (sharing, listening-to learn, radical curiosity, open heartedness, multiplicity) or compassion or dig out the old copy of Dale Carnegie and remember how to make friends the old-fashioned, timeless way?

Reuben Mayes and Pastor Lilia. She is wearing her "12" earrings at the community meal last night

These neighbors are delighted to share their similar interests in gardening and grandchildren

I am not the only one promoting neighboring this year nor in the past, but Lady Gaga is taking it to a new level in Mr. Rogers' famous song. Watch the whole video. It's short

John tells me that not everyone knows to click on the underlined, highlighted text to get to the link, so do that if you want to get a little inspiration.