In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country crossed over oceans and countries...we could see no national boundaries, no vast gulfs or high walls dividing people from people; only nature and the works of man -- homes and factories and farms -- everywhere reflecting man's common effort to enrich his life. Everywhere new technology and communications brings men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably become the concerns of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of differences which is at the root of injustice and hate and war. Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ends at river's shore, his common humanity is enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town or his views and the color of his skin.
~Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Address, University of Capetown, Capetown, South Africa, June 6, 1966
Have you ever flown cross-country? Many or most of us have. Flying over our beautiful country, have you ever looked out the window and tried to guess which state you're flying over? Have you ever thought how odd it is that there are no fences surrounding each of our states? There are no fences surrounding our towns and cities, our states, even our national borders for the most part. Yet we tend to fence our yards, and some of us live in gated communities.
But we often act as if our entire lives are ruled by borders. This is MY side of the bed. I wish they'd clean up THEIR side of the street. She keeps playing that music I hate and I can hear it in MY cubicle. Knock before you come into MY office. I moved HERE to get away from those people. I would never live THERE--that's a red state. We're constantly defining ourselves by our sense of space and place.
When astronauts travel into space and beam back to us images of our planet, all we see is a blue ball. We don't see different races and ethnicities, differences in political and religious beliefs, wars being fought over the same small piece of land for its resources. We don't even see people. All we see is a whole bunch of water and some land. Yet how fiercely we live our lives as if our world ended, in RFK's words, at the nearest hill.
We even create borders within our own psyches and personalities. We fence off certain parts of our self. I would never say that to HIM. I don't act that way when I'm with HER. I would never let my family know I think like THAT. No wonder we fight so many personal wars--we're constantly defending our borders!
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. ~Nelson Mandela
In 12-step programs when someone newly in recovery moves to another city, we call it "pulling a geographic." You can move to a new town, but you're still the same person when you get there. How many of us have moved around thinking that it was the place that would make us happy? (I'll put my hand down now.) Maybe we felt too confined or restricted where we'd been living...or conversely, maybe we were looking to create more discipline and structure in our lives.
It can be argued that place can define us--and I would be one of the ones most vehemently defending that argument. But it can also be argued that we define our place. And we've got the pollution and ozone layer to prove it. As heartbreaking as the horrific damage to our environment has been, it can't begin to compare to the damage we've caused our fellow humans as a result of the pollution in our minds and hearts. You've heard of Superfund sites? Those hazardous places that are so off-the-charts that the government created a special entity to clean them up. Except, of course, they never really get cleaned up. There's a Superfund site on St. Thomas and from what I could tell in my reading about it, nothing had been done in 20 or 25 years to try to clean it up.
Why have I suddenly veered into environmental lingo? Because one of the ways we defend our personal borders is by trying to keep out people we don't like and beliefs we don't share--we don't want them polluting our little world. What did RFK call it? A dark and poisoning superstition. That idea that man's "common humanity is enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town or his views and the color of his skin." I can't imagine anything less humane.
This entire country is, in my opinion, an enormous Superfund site. We have a lot of toxic cleanup to do. And by clean-up I don't mean one side convincing the other that it's right. That's my whole point. How can we begin to fully embrace and love each other if there are sides to begin with? I've written before how in my more lucid moments I'm able to not view things in the context of sides (or borders)--how I'm able to look at it as if we're all standing in a large circle. We might all be looking at an issue that's in the center of the circle, but our perspective on it will be different from the perspective of someone who's standing right next to us in the circle. It's about accepting others' right to have their unique perception. I've never thought the solution was for everyone to have the same beliefs; I believe the solution is for us to learn to accept others' beliefs without trying to impose ours on them. If we were able to do that, we'd have no need for all these internal and external borders.
Call me an idealist, but keep this in mind--we are all standing in a large circle. It's blue...and it's orbiting the sun.
Recent Comments