Patrizia Barbera

One decision, one thought.

Imagine: It's early in the morning. The tea kettle is rattling on the stove, the day is young and you, carefully and almost automatically repeating all the steps of the dance you do every morning, walk to the front door to get the mail. Now, if you live in Europe or the United States this scene may either look very unspectacular – going down the stairs of the building you live in to check the mailboxes on the ground floor – or very Hollywoodesque in the way we've all seen in movies, where you put on a bathrobe over your clothes, open the front door to pick up the paper, that is probably laying on your porch, while you let your gaze wander around in front of you to check the neighborhood for a short while before you go back inside.

It's unspectacular. It's part of our daily morning routines.

For all of „us“? No. Not in Norway.

At some point in time, somewhere in a probably not very interestingly looking building, a committee talked to city architects about the general organization of streets and neighborhoods in Norway – how could it be done, which colors on the houses are allowed (only red, yellow and green?), how high can they be built, what could there be done for the community?

„What about the mailboxes?“, somebody, probably with very blond hair said in a deep voice. „What about them, Bjørn Hansen?“

„We could organize them street by street. Each street could have a board on which all the mailboxes are attached. We can give the board the design of a house, and write the name of the street on it followed by the word community – imagine the positive impact!“, he said with a growing spark in his eyes.

I don't know if this is true but that's how I imagine it all happening. So, now: imagine!

What does this simple idea do to the community of this street? To the seemingly unimportant part of each and everyone's mini step in the dance of the day?

The last weeks that I've spent traveling around Norway, I witnessed it: Old people, teenagers, neighbors – they all meet casually at the mailbox board, greet each other, smile and laugh, stop for a while to talk, invite each other over for coffee and leave, both carrying their mail to have that coffee together.

One decision, one thought – a whole world of difference in social cohesion, the way people go about their lives each day, the way they connect (or don't connect), how old people have the opportunity to talk to their neighbors once in a while, feel connected, not alone.

One thought is all it takes sometimes, one idea.

It's the little things.