A long ways back I wrote a longish poem about the spaces between us all. The feelings of that poem stay with me.
We like our personal space, it is a way we assert our individuality which we so painfully build as we emerge from childhood to adulthood. Few of us have ever reexamined the necessity of that space in later years. Its as if we fear that if we relax the boundaries a bit we'll fall back into childish helplessness.
Adulthood is spent with a good deal of anxiety about being lonely. Why? Because we only touch at a distance, true intimacy is risky and increases our emotional vulnerability. Children love without boundaries. Adults erect walls everywhere. We are secure in our little isolated islands.
But what if we did fore-go the walls? What would happen? We could find that a lot of people are sociopaths who will rob us of all that we value. That's got to be the worst scenario. But wait, don't we have that problem now? Sociopaths are the ones who take from everyone else and put it behind their own wall. If 'normal' healthy people stopped erecting walls, wouldn't the few sociopaths keeping their walls be clearly visible? Maybe then we could finally wall them off from the rest of us and live less lonely, most connected lives. Maybe we could love without boundaries and live without fear.
The poem is called "If". Its' here on this blog. Let's tear down the wall.
We like our personal space, it is a way we assert our individuality which we so painfully build as we emerge from childhood to adulthood. Few of us have ever reexamined the necessity of that space in later years. Its as if we fear that if we relax the boundaries a bit we'll fall back into childish helplessness.
Adulthood is spent with a good deal of anxiety about being lonely. Why? Because we only touch at a distance, true intimacy is risky and increases our emotional vulnerability. Children love without boundaries. Adults erect walls everywhere. We are secure in our little isolated islands.
But what if we did fore-go the walls? What would happen? We could find that a lot of people are sociopaths who will rob us of all that we value. That's got to be the worst scenario. But wait, don't we have that problem now? Sociopaths are the ones who take from everyone else and put it behind their own wall. If 'normal' healthy people stopped erecting walls, wouldn't the few sociopaths keeping their walls be clearly visible? Maybe then we could finally wall them off from the rest of us and live less lonely, most connected lives. Maybe we could love without boundaries and live without fear.
The poem is called "If". Its' here on this blog. Let's tear down the wall.
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