Saturday, April 20, 2024

The Walls Within

There are many walls in our lives.  

We see walls in our houses, separating different uses of living spaces.  

We see walls in the houses of our neighbors, isolating their privacy from the public.

We see walls most everywhere, all designed to separate, to keep apart, to protect.

But we can declare that these are walls that do not separate us in alienation and estrangement from the rest of humanity.

But there are walls that do. These are the walls in our minds.  The walls that we willingly or unwittingly build  that put us at odds with the rest of the world. The walls that tend to alienate and make us indifferent of others.

Many believe that solitude is akin to creating walls. But this is not necessarily so.  For many solitude opens to a greater and kinder world, devoid of constricting walls.  Like walls of indifference, hostility, enmity, discrimination, and yes, arrogance. 

Many ardently believe that in solitude one is most attuned to the rest of the world. We are most aligned to our humanity when we do live in the world, but not to be of this world.

Those walls we need to break.  The walls within.