One of the reasons I continue to love the metaphor of neighborhoods is that it reminds me of the beautiful complexity of every human being.
Each of us has within us an expanding world that is made up of many different neighborhoods.
Some neighborhoods hold our happiest memories, some hold heartbreak, some are filled with laughter, some have become quiet because we have not visited them for a very long time, and some neighborhoods challenge us.
These are the places where we struggle, where we become reactive, where old patterns can easily take over.
And there are some neighborhoods we avoid altogether.
Perhaps they carry disappointment, grief, shame, or fear. We know they are there, yet we quietly walk around them because we are not yet ready to enter.
And then there are our Precious Neighborhoods.
These are the places where we come most fully alive, our strengths emerge naturally, joy feels effortless, and where we remember something essential about who we are.
When someone visits us there with genuine curiosity, we feel seen in a very different way.
It’s endlessly fascinating.
But there is one kind of neighborhood that fascinates me even more.
It is the neighborhoods that have not yet been discovered.
I have spent my life watching people surprise themselves. A woman discovers, at seventy years old, that she loves to paint. A man who has always believed he was quiet discovers that he has become a beautiful storyteller with his grandchildren. A couple who believed they had reached the end of their relationship discovers a capacity for tenderness they never imagined possible.
Those neighborhoods were always waiting. Life simply had not invited them to visit yet.
This is one of the reasons I never believe I fully know another person.
And I never believe I fully know myself.
There are neighborhoods in each of us that have not yet been explored with experiences waiting to shape us, strengths waiting to emerge, dreams and aspirations waiting to call us forward.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts of relationship.
Not simply that someone loves us as we are, but that they lovingly accompany us as we continue becoming.
When we approach one another this way, curiosity never disappears and wonder never disappears, because we begin to understand that no matter how many years we have shared together, there is always another neighborhood waiting to be discovered.
And that may be one of the greatest joys of the journey.