If there is a silver lining to this pandemic, this virus, this “thing” that has admittedly consumed whatever version of “normal” we all once knew, it is a sense of community and neighborhood that our once fast-paced lives had trampled.

Throughout Vicksburg and Warren County, you have seen one neighborhood after another, one street after another, one block after another, come together to enjoy the amazing weather we have been blessed with so far, and to interact in a way that was often impossible.

In many ways, bonds have been formed that would have never been possible. Before the restrictions and shelter-in-place orders, neighbors would have engaged one another with a friendly honk of the horn and a wave as they passed each other on the street.

While now is not a time for neighborhood block parties and large gatherings at homes, it is a time when neighborhoods have found their importance once again.

We have found what it means to “be in this together” and share a common concern and foe.

Sadly, there will very likely be a time when one of our friends or neighbors will become a statistic, a figure in the updated number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. And it is at that moment, when being a neighbor, being a friend, will be more important than ever.

This country has long been at its best when neighborhoods cared for one another and policed themselves and as a group.

Maybe this virus is reminding us of what being a neighbor and being neighborly is all about and why it is so important.

The virus has taken so much from us individually and as a community.

But as a result of fighting this virus and fighting for one another, we’ve restored in us something our fast-paced lives took from us long ago; a sense and belief in one another and our neighborhoods.