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Aug 28, 2004 Robert Frost said in his “Mending Wall,” there is something in a wall that good neighbors make…[sic.]. Does a wall make good neighbors? You’ll have to be your own judge on this one. I don’t have a wall, but my wife and I do have a privacy fence. We have it for several reasons: privacy (duh), keep our Doberman out of trouble, cuts out some of the city sounds, and it just feels good. I can walk into the backyard with my bare beer gut hanging out and know one is the wiser. I’m sure that the Palestinians and Israelis would disagree that a wall “good neighbors make.” However, the wall has served a purpose “in part.” It has reduced the amount of suicide bombings. Although, it has in my opinion separated and alienated two nationalities that could have been “good neighbors” with just a little more effort. The Berlin Wall came down with finality never before seen by civilization. Two countries became one. Brothers and sisters finally reunited with their parents. Grandparents reunited with grandchildren. And, old friends united with old friends to hoist a beer together again, to laugh and talk about old times and new dreams. A city and a people became whole once again. The Great Wall of China is an example of an idea that’s time has been over for centuries. It was built to keep enemies out. Instead of thinking of ways to make friends it seems we as a global culture try to think of ways to keep friends away from us. We call them enemies and build walls to keep them away, never thinking that they could possibly be friends. We build walls around our prisons and we keep building prisons. Instead of solving the problems of crime, addiction, and insanity, we build walls to protect ourselves from the very problems we should be trying to solve. Today we build walls around the castles we call homes. We build mental walls around ourselves in the form of prejudices and hatred towards others. We don’t require a great deal of encouragement to build these walls. We call ourselves Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Republicans, Democrats, Communists, or Socialists; then, we build a wall. Label Walls, that’s what they are; we label someone and we build a wall to protect ourselves from them. We label ourselves as “good” and build a wall so we can stay that way.
Yet, here I am, a hypocrite of sorts.
My wife and I love our wall. We love the peace
it brings us after a day in a world of madness.
We love the privacy it offers us to enjoy our
own uniqueness. Is there something in a
wall “that good neighbors make?”
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