“Through the Fence”
Robert Frost once wrote a poem called “Mending Wall,” and in it one of the characters says:
Good fences make good neighbors.
Lots of people have quoted that saying as a way of making the case that when we each have clearly demarcated spaces, everyone feels safer. But Frost actually meant it as a critique of that idea. Frost wanted to make the case that you and I are worse off when we’re cut off from one another. Fences are (he might say) “a solution in search of a problem.”
The fence in this image is so menacing. What intrigued me about the scene is the barbed wire is undisturbed, and there are barely repaired gaps in the less scary part of the fence. I’m struck by the dichotomy.
It seems humans do this a lot. We put up “barbed wire” in our lives to scare one another off, but it doesn’t really work. Someone is always cutting through our defenses. We try to repair it - try to keep people out - but they just come back and cut a new hole.
Humans are not built to be cut off from each other. I know a lot of us enjoy time alone (Myself included. I’m a photographer, for crying out loud!), but we harm ourselves when we aren’t in community. I think there’s a natural desire to be connected, and so, we cut through the fences in our lives and the lives of others.
Nope. I don’t beleive “good fences make good neighbors.”
