Neighbor.

neigh·bor (nbr)
n.
1. One who lives near or next to another.
2. A person, place, or thing adjacent to or located near another.
3. A fellow human.
4. Used as a form of familiar address.
v. neigh·bored, neigh·bor·ing, neigh·bors

How often do I forget this? A neighbor is nothing more than a fellow human. Someone who might be in a completely different situation than me, but never removed from their humanity, just as I can never be removed from mine.

The thing I love best about using a definition as simple as that is that it breaks down any sort of walls you might try to put up. It can mean the person next door just as easily as it means the person across the globe. We are all fellow humans; all wanting...needing...desperate for love and desperate for justice.

A few years ago, a group of us were discussing our neighborhoods and one person asked us to write down the names of all the neighbors we knew. Not just first names - first and last. I could write down one. One name of one neighbor of one neighborhood that I had lived in for four years. My dissapointment in myself was palpable but my hope for moving forward was tangible.

Who are your neighbors? First and last name, of course.