When life gives you guavas
On loving your annoying neighbor
The guava tree in our yard has been very prolific these past few months, bearing more fruit than I know what to do with.
It’s exciting, because this tree almost died of a fungal infection and some sort of other infestation. For years, my husband and I mulled whether we just needed to cut it down for its own sake, as well as to protect the other plants. But we doused it with Neem oil, we splashed our used soapy dishwater on it, and watered it copiously, and eventually it made a comeback. And now, we have piles of guavas!
Guavas are a huge amount of work. They’re filled with seeds that are just big enough to be uncomfortable to swallow, and hard enough that there’s no chewing them, or even grinding them into palatable pieces with a food processor. Getting useful fruit from guavas is a whole production, so I save them in the refrigerator until I have enough to justify this task.
Guavas are high in vitamin C, and very acidic. There is no way of doing this task without being vividly reminded that the cuts on my fingertips I have from some of my other hobbies have not, in fact, healed fully yet.
The thing is, I don’t even like guavas. The line between bitter, ripe, and rotten is excruciatingly thin. They don’t have the punchy sweetness of a pineapple nor the custardy richness of a soursop. They’re fine, I guess, but I certainly wouldn’t choose them. Really guavas just work as part of a recipe, if they’re mixed with something else. They make a good smoothie with coconut milk and some spices (and rum).
But the tree gives her fruit, so what kind of jerk would I be if I turned up my nose at this gift? So into the food processor the guavas go, and when I’ve put away the guava mash I’ve made and do the dishes, I save the soapy wash water to splash over her leaves. We don’t want that fungal infection to get worse.
At the foot of the guava tree, there is a soccer ball. Again.
There’s a group of kids between the ages of about six and ten who have been playing in the street outside our house most days, from when they get home from school until it gets dark—which is around 7 p.m. this time of year. There’s a lot of running around, screaming, and general hijinks. There’s a lot of throwing and kicking things around, and that’s how the soccer ball keeps ending up in our yard.
When we moved here, this area was very quiet and calm. Now, evenings are filled with shrieking, and there’s a child clambering over the roof of my car to retrieve a model airplane. I would not have chosen this.
“Miss, can you get me the soccer ball? I’m sorry I kicked it over the wall again, and I won’t do it again,” an eight year old girl at my gate says to me.
A car playing soca at an unreasonably loud volume rumbles down the street.
Neighbors can be really annoying.
Wanting to live alone because neighbors are annoying is an increasingly common theme in “social” media, at least in my experience.
Let me tell you what, though: I do live on an isolated island, and I have never been less alone. Neighbors are everywhere. When we first moved to this island, our next door neighbor was so infamous for playing music loudly at all hours that his sound system was confiscated by the police more than once. He always replaces it, though. When we moved away, to the formerly-quiet neighborhood, he gave me a CD of Cameroonian covers of Elton John songs and a perfect soursop as a going away gift. These days, I live on the opposite side of the island. I only see him once a day, when I pass him playing his music loudly and feeding the feral chickens at 7:00 in the morning, when I’m on my way to work. I always wave and say hi. I miss him.
The Bible has a lot of things to say about neighbors, although it never once mentions that neighbors can be annoying. A repeated theme is that neighbors should be loved. Calling on older scriptures, Jesus states that the most important commandments are these:
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
I am a champ at doing this in the abstract. I read stories on the internet of tragedies far away and I feel feelings of compassion for imagined versions of people I haven’t met. I contribute to GoFundMes. I send money to GiveDirectly and such.
But in real life, I can be just as sour as American posters of isolationist memes about how they can’t go out because it’s “too peopley” out there. I can love the imagined stranger 10,000 miles away more easily than I can fight my annoyance at the real neighbor next door.
I was thinking about this recently when I learned this interesting bit about the word “neighbor,” as used in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
writes:The word we read in English in the parable as ‘neighbor’ is translated from the Greek πλησίος (plesios), which can be translated as ‘near’ or ‘close to.’ Unlike the Hebrew word which appears in the Old Testament and is translated as ‘neighbor’ (רֵעַ - rēa which can be understood as ‘friend’, ‘associate’ or ‘fellow-citizen’ and denotes an existing social relationship), plesios has a definite and integral spatial component (i.e. denoting a geographic rather than social relationship). In this context it literally means ‘one who we are physically close to’.
It is strange, then, that this spatial component, which is integral to our English word ‘neighbor’ as well, is often ignored in contemporary discussions of Christian charity. And this spatial component does not just appear in the word plesios - it is more broadly integral to the parable which Jesus provides us with, which tells of a physical encounter which results in moral obligations to those physically present at the scene.
Kurtz goes on to observe that you can’t really love someone you don’t actually know1. But there’s something else you can’t do with someone far away, either, and that’s to be annoyed at them. For people at a distance, you get to choose whether to interact with them, and if they’re annoying, you can just not do that2. But anyone in your physical proximity is right there; you can try to ignore them and walk away like the bad guys in the parable do, I suppose, but you can’t fully avoid the physical fact of their presence. You may be able to choose the neighborhood you live in, but you can’t choose your neighbors. You’re just supposed to love them.
It’s harder to love a real person annoying you in your physical space than a vision of a faraway person you can imagine to be perfectly deserving of your charity, never to be disabused of that notion by actually having to spend time with them. It’s easier to be charitable to your rationally-chosen noble cause3 than the guy playing his music too loud next door, who you definitely would not have chosen.
I am so grateful for the wonderful people I only know from meeting them online, and I am so happy to be able to support their causes from a distance4. But being nice to someone I already chose to interact with isn’t nearly as big of an ask as loving the neighbor I didn’t.
I would not choose a sickly, spotted guava tree. But there she was in our yard we did choose, and what were we to do—just let her die? So we worked to save her, and now I’ve got all these guavas I don’t want.
“Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit,” Jesus also said. “Thus you will know them by their fruits.” So what kind of tree am I?
I am like a guava: I can be bitter; I can be rotten; but with care and in collaboration with others I can be made into something really pretty good. And can’t we all?
Under our care, the guava tree rebounded. She grew so much that we had to trim one of her branches off. It was hanging over the road, annoying our neighbors.
There’s shrieking and shenanigans in our street once again. A kid is blowing a whistle, and another is banging a drum. “This is what a healthy childhood sounds like,”5 I mutter to myself as a soothing mantra. I am trying to not get annoyed. I am trying to be a better neighbor.
I hear a thunk, and one child yelling at another, “NO IT’S YOUR TURN, YOU GO GET IT!!” So I go to the gate, to get the lost ball back to its owner. But this time, I let her in.
She hasn’t been in my yard before. She spies her soccer ball, and the gravid guava tree.
“Oh my gosh, miss, may I have a guava? Please? They’re my favorite! I love them!”
But just because one cannot completely do a thing, doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try. One of the gripes I have with Kurtz’ original piece and its accompanying pieces is their implication that one should just be looking after the people closest to them. I can give to charities helping people in faraway places and I can help my neighbor, it’s not either/or.
Of course, many things we see on the internet are chosen for us by engagement-maximizing algorithms, and therefore might be annoying. But one could choose not to go on those annoying internet sites.
But if you want to rationally choose the most efficient charity to help people, GiveWell’s top charities are a great way to go. And, again, the evidence for the effectiveness of just giving people cash to solve their problems is exceptionally strong.
I’m delighted to be able to help the neighbors of
in his community, even though I’ve never met them, or him, in real life. But I’m lucky to know him here, and grateful for the opportunity to support Michigan Faith in Action through subscribing to his Substack. Similarly, I’ll never meet in person either, but I’m happy to have his acquaintance and help support the Robin Hood Foundation at the same time.Evidence that children’s mental health suffers from screen time and social media rather than playing outside with friends continues to mount. A good roundup of some of this data can be found at
and in particular their section on play-based childhood.
I wasn't aware how tightly the greek word for neighbor means the physically proximate! Another score for sacramentality.
Once upon a time, way back in the mid '90s, I spent a spring break trip visiting Puerto Rico and the smaller island of Culebra, so that's what I'm imagining from your writing. We weren't there to party, we were there just for the experience and to help do some cleanup work on the beaches while we were at it. Even just in those few days, the people there left an impression; island life would be at once wonderful and very challenging, as everyone is up in everyone else's business.
Where we are now, we are blessed to be part of a neighborhood where the people around us do interact. Sometimes it's annoying - loud music and parties are a frequent occurrence - but ultimately it is good to know that we have people literally right next door and beyond who we can turn to sometimes, and who feel comfortable turning to us. We never would have chosen any of them, but we are glad they are here and hope they feel the same way about us.
The hidden implication in Christ's command to love our neighbors is that it NEEDED to be said. If loving our neighbors were easy and natural, there'd be no reason to bring it up.
I love your take on the guavas. We have lived several places with different types of fruit trees, and almost never know what to do with all the excess fruit. It does seem a terrible shame when it goes to waste.