Neighbor Wars

Hawaii is a pretty special place when it comes to tolerance and acceptance of others. In general the people of Hawaii accept our differences and can joke around about them. Often people that visit from outside Hawaii are not sure how to take it.

There is a song called Mr. San Cho Lee that was written and performed by Keola Beamer. This song is a good example of the differences in our various races living in Hawaii and how amazing it is that we can all live in the same place.

While we do have an amazing ability to get along in Hawaii, we are not without our problems. Often just the simplest situations can grow into grudges that can last a lifetime.

It is Christmas morning and I was enjoying the morning with my daughter and grandchildren when I heard what sounded like a very large dog barking next door. Knowing that most of the dogs in the neighborhood were small, I had to wonder. It dawned on me what the sound might be.

At this point I’ll back up to explain some issues in my neighborhood. First of all I want to say that all my neighbors are good people, they just don’t necessarily get along. Awhile back my neighbor (I’ll call neighbor “A”) and his neighbor (I’ll call neighbor “B”) had some issues with each other over B’s cats coming in A’s yard to do their business. Cat’s being a pretty free roaming animal made it difficult for them to resolve the issue and to make matters worse, the more deterrents that A put in, the more the cats seemed to want to wander in A’s yard. This created the beginning of the “Neighbor wars.”

Over the last six months, neighbor B has added a pack of small dogs to there array of animals. I’m not sure if they used to have any dogs, but I know that there is about three and they are very vocal throughout the day and night.

Apparently when neighbor A would venture into his backyard, the dogs would take great delight in barking continuously at him. One day he decided he had had enough and took his hose to them. I’m not sure if this worked very well or just made the dogs more determined, but apparently one day neighbor B decided that they had had enough of neighbor A's hosing the dogs and neighbor B then hosed neighbor A!

Well, it wasn’t long before neighbor A had the Police at the house and made a report about the neighbor B’s hose attack. Again I am not sure of what became of the Police report, but I know that tensions only escalated between neighbors A and B.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about explaining the Christmas day noise. It just takes some time to put the story in perspective.

Neighbor B has since put shade cloth on their side of neighbor A’s fence to shield the dogs from being sprayed by neighbor A. Neighbor A has repeatedly knocked the shade cloth off and even put up a sign warning neighbor B that the fence is his and the shade cloth would create wind resistance that could knock over the fence. At this point the cloth remains and neighbor A is now planning on having the police come to the house while he removes his fencing. The idea being that neighbor B can build their own fence and if their dogs then decide to venture into neighbor A’s yard, he will then have the right to deal with them as he sees fit.

So here we are on Christmas day. The fence is still up and I’m wondering where this very large dog bark is coming from. I had a pretty good idea it had to do with the neighbor wars and so I went out to the backyard to take a look.

Sure enough, neighbor A had installed a motion detector alarm that sounds like a very large dog. Now when ever neighbor B’s three small dogs come around his fence, the very large dog alarm sounds.

Somehow I don’t think this will help the situation. However, I do know that beyond the sound of neighbor B’s three yapping small dogs, I will get to listen to the sound of a very large dog’s woofing. Since I already sleep with the windows closed and air conditioner on just to block all the neighborhood noise, I’m not sure how this new source of noise will figure in. Add that to the fairly regular sound of sirens passing up and down the street, the illegal and sometimes legal fireworks, neighborhood rooster’s crowing, on-going construction and backyard drinking parties. I can really relate to the Mr. San Cho Lee song’s ending line “it’s amazing that we can live in the same place.”

I would hope that all who read this can join me in finding the humor of it all and use it as an opportunity to practice Ho'oponopono. Especially on Christmas day, we can all look inside ourselves for the love and forgiveness. Accepting our own responsibility in everything that becomes a part of our experience, we are then able to help to heal the world around us.

My hope on this Christmas is that we can all heal ourselves and in turn the world will follow.

Merry Christmas
Mele Kalikimaka