How do I live beside a neighbour who makes my life miserable?

Each morning I reminded myself: today I will meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, envious and unsociable. They are like that because they do not know good from bad. But I do, and so none of them can harm me, for no one can make me do wrong. Nor can I be angry with them or hate them, because we were made to work together, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth.nnI was an emperor, and I still had to live beside difficult people every day. I did not choose them. Neither did you choose your neighbour. What you can choose is whether their behaviour becomes your behaviour. The noise, the rudeness, the petty provocations are outside you. Your anger, your rehearsed arguments at three in the morning, your bitterness, those are inside, and they are yours.nnSo begin each day expecting the worst from them, not to sour yourself, but so that you are not surprised. Then, when it comes, notice that it has not actually harmed you, not the real you, unless you let it.nnThis does not mean doing nothing. If they break the law or cause real damage, take the proper steps, calmly, as a matter of business. But do it as a neighbour who still wishes them no ill, not as an enemy. The best revenge, I wrote once, is not to become like the one who wronged you.

A man is crossing a river in his boat when an empty boat drifts down and bumps into him. However bad his temper, he does not get angry. But if he sees someone in the other boat, he shouts at them to steer clear. If they do not hear, he shouts again, and again, and then he curses them. In the first case he was not angry. In the second he was furious. The bump was the same. All that changed was that he saw a person in the boat.nnIf you can empty your own boat, I said, as you cross the river of the world, no one will oppose you and no one will try to harm you.nnYour neighbour bumps into you, again and again. You see a person in their boat, someone who means it, who is doing it to you, and you shout. Of course you do. But try, just for a while, to see their boat as empty. The barking dog, the loud music, the hostility, these are things drifting down the river. They are not aimed at you, even when they seem to be. Your neighbour is carried along by their own currents, their own unhappiness, which you will never see.nnThis is not weakness. When the boat is empty, you can simply steer around it, calmly, and do what needs doing. When you fill it with a person who hates you, you can only fight. Steer around.

I once observed that two neighbours may agree to drain a meadow they own in common, because each can see the other's part in it and each knows that if he fails, the whole thing fails. A thousand people could never agree in the same way. That is why towns need governments and rules. But between two households, a simple agreement is still possible, and it is usually the best remedy.nnI would also say that we are more sympathetic creatures than we pretend. We catch each other's moods. A neighbour who meets hostility returns it, and the feeling grows on both sides by contagion, until neither remembers how it began. The same contagion can work the other way. A small kindness, an unexpected greeting, a plate of something from the garden, can change the tone of a whole street.nnSo before you think about councils, lawyers and letters, which are for strangers, try what neighbours have always done. Knock, choose a calm moment, and propose a plain bargain. I will keep my hedge trimmed if you keep the music down after ten. Make it specific and mutual. People keep agreements that serve them and that they helped to make.nnIf that fails, then by all means turn to the rules and the authorities, which exist precisely because private agreement sometimes breaks down. But in my experience most quarrels between neighbours are kept going by pride on both sides, and a fair bargain gives both a way out.