Walls
- by Nigel A. James
A
short essay to keep thinking in place!
Walls
have never failed to interest me. Whilst still very young, I
remember being fascinated by the thought of that which was behind a
very long brick wall which lay on the way to my school.
Unfortunately, I never found out. And then, later on, I couldn't
help wondering why Berlin needed a wall which ran bang through its
middle. Walls, in a word, are a subject of interest.
And, they come in many different shapes, lengths, sizes
and heights. And, all this has to do with the purpose for which they
were built. And, the number of reasons for putting up walls are, in
reality, very, very few. In fact only two.
Walls are either for keeping people or animals in, or
for keeping them out. And, walls are a very big part of our lives.
All of us need them.
Walls
are the guardians of our privacy. We need them to separate that
which is ours from everyone else's. And the stronger and higher the
better. And, society is walls within walls within walls. Some are
good and some are bad, and many are necessary and some are of no use
at all. And, our walls begin with ourselves.
Many
people build invisible walls around themselves to prevent others from
getting too close. And, other people see walls which aren't really
there. Walls are both real and imaginary.
Prisons,
of course, need walls to keep people in, and quite rightly so. But,
what about national borders which are there to keep people out?
These, too, are walls – but – of a different nature. Shouldn't
national boundaries be a thing of the past? We are, all of us, all
part of the one same world!
So,
which walls do we really need? There is a saying in America that
says that good garden fences make very good neighbours. There is a
lot of truth in this pocket sized piece of wisdom. And, the truth of
this saying lies in the fact that there are very many people who are
not happy with having just that which is theirs, they want more.
And, the only way to prevent others from getting that which is yours
is to build a wall to protect it. So walls, at the end of the day,
are all about angst.
And,
history is full of examples of angst. There is the Great Wall of
China, the Berlin Wall, the wall which separated the two sides in
Israel, the Maginot wall which failed in the war, and, of course,
the wall which stops the Mexicans entering the United States of
America. There are countless other examples as well.
But,
most walls are really incapable of resisting the attempts of those
determined to pass. How many people escaped from East Berlin? Did
the Maginot line stop the Germans from invading France in the Second
World War? How effective is the wall along the Mexican border? The
point is that all walls have doors, and not all doors look like
doors.
Doors,
just like walls, come in many different forms. It all depends on the
wall. The Berlin wall, for example, allowed people to pass in a
variety of ways. There were ladders, tunnels, disguises and cunning,
and so-on. Walls are only as strong as the imagination of those who
build them!
So,
if walls don't really work, why bother putting them up?
Diarikom's
Podcast – A985
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