It sure gets blood pumping in the morning watching near misses and community breakdown. Parents get another shot six hours later at pickup. This week, believing the minivan stuffed with carpool kids elated to be released from school was following the zipper method upon exiting the parking, I moved into line. Shockingly, the other driver laid on the horn, scaring the little people in my own van — as well as her own, I’m sure. My moving into line prolonged her stay at school for about 10 seconds — her reaction completely balanced. I was equally measured with my gratuitous arm flapping and snark. As we took off for our homes, it was soon established she lives a block down from me. We live in the same zip code, school boundary and block yet she treated me like a pedestrian on a New York street. If we can’t be civil to those parents who send their most valuable creation to the same school, how can we expect our kids to do the same with one another?

Time and again, surveys conducted by the various entities monitoring our children’s mental health and our own tell us it’s a lack of community connection that leads to crime, mental health crisis and hostility. Community connection is the belief that we belong where we live, that those who surround us want us to succeed. Community springs from the word “commune,” meaning we share responsibility for a higher purpose of achievement. Living in the same space, sharing the same schools and shopping the same aisles, we all face the same problems — school drop-off being the least, yet the most telling.

A sickness pervading several aspects of our community is the concept of “othering.” Similar to Amish shunning, a community targets the “other,” marginalizing and separating them from community, from the culture of the area. We see this happen with LGBTQ+, those with learning disabilities and maybe just the kid who doesn’t like football. The devastating effect of othering afflicts entire communities, like a plague. We see the casualties lined up in our daily paper, social media feeds and cemeteries. Othering slowly kills community connection.

Othering groups, a person, even a child leads to a lack of support systems, increased mental health challenges and diminished belonging. Often when we see an “other” in our community, we immediately think how to keep our family separate, protected from this person who approaches life differently. This attitude doesn’t serve your family or our community as a whole. Instead, we must reframe, think how we can make this person included, how can their experience strengthen our community. This approach can also enrich our own lives. We live in these cities together, celebrating the same holidays or waving at the same parades, but civility quickly takes a back seat when the differences appear.

Despite our first impulse to pull the covers back over our heads each morning, percolating ideas on how to avoid the day, humans are social creators. We seek connection with community, whether it be through the PTA or a biker gang. Both those groups give a sense of belonging and purpose. On a larger scale, your city is community. Dr. Dan Siegel spent his life researching the human brain and the effects of interpersonal interaction. He found the health of our mind is directly linked to the relationships in our lives. He wrote, “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.” We are capable of being good community partners if we behave as one ourselves. Dr. Siegel studied the neural pathways and functions of the human brain from birth to death. He found no matter the age or stage, our support systems and networks are the strongest predictors of our health and well-being.

The predilection of othering and severing connection has a lasting effect on the small world we live in day-to-day. It’s certainly no easy task showing our community members greater compassion and grace, especially in a time of great division and overabundance of transparency. It’s no wonder I felt my childhood community of the 90s overflowed with inclusion versus my neighborhood of the 2020s. We know exactly everyone’s thoughts, creeds and what they had for breakfast because it’s splashed on Facebook, T-shirts, car bumpers or even a newspaper.

Showing our community more patience leads to nothing but positives. It’s a perfect case of “don’t crap where you eat.” Instead it’s “don’t honk where you live” because you’re bound to run in to that driver for years. Whether it be political, cultural or economic, our social divides are great, but we must work at being the change we want to see in our community. I’m holding myself to this same standard because I know I can do better at showing my North Ogden neighbors more grace. I can ask myself am I helping someone become what they are capable of being?

My cynicism with this experiment of grace and patience with my community was tested this morning as I watched two adults dropping off their small children flapping their arms at one another deciding whose kid and time is more valuable. Ironically, they wasted both their and every other parent’s time so they could bicker. I wish I could remind them: You could be sitting next to each other at the next Cherry Day Parade. In the meantime, I lay off the horn.

Meg Sanders worked in broadcast journalism for over a decade but has since turned her life around to stay closer to home in Ogden. Her three children keep her indentured as a taxi driver, stylist and sanitation worker. In her free time, she likes to read, write, lift weights and go to concerts with her husband of 18 years.