thewall

The wall

by Bob on August 9, 2007

The wall. Could be the Great Wall of China. It could be the brilliant album from 1979 by Pink Floyd, and song by that same name. It could be an interpersonal barrier we set up between us. It could be a demarcation of land. It could be something to keep out the ocean water. It could be something we use to hit or throw a ball against for fun or sport, like handball. It could be something to keep out trespassers and invaders. It could be just a simple exercise in bricklaying for a beautiful result. It could be something a cat would walk on top of. It might be what Humpy Dumpty fell off of. It might be what holds up a building, namely, a weight-bearing wall. It might be a wall of sound like Phil Spector liked.

But let's think of a wall as a kind of barrier between people.

I once knew a person who erected a wall around his property so that no one could walk on his grass. I said I thought that was harsh since everyone used to visit him and his family. But he wanted to keep people off. That's understandable but most certainly "un-mutual" as they said in The Prisoner TV series from the late 1960s. Does one really need the wall ? He said yes. Since it wasn't a transparent wall, he forgot about his neighbors and the nice teas they used to have on the lawn. So he involuted. That was unfortunate. It wasn't what he was planning. The wall did it.

We have to be careful about barriers we erect and why we erect them. We could get trapped in behind them without even realising it.

Everyone seems to talk about "boundaries" these days. At work. In interpersonal realtionships. Walls are being erected symbolically and emotionally everywhere -- even when and where they shouldn't. And it seems where barriers should be erected, they aren't.

Shakespeare did write about one seeming wall and boundary. He called it a "bourne" ("bourn") -- which is an old word for a line of demarcation. In his "Hamlet", Act III, Scene I, he writes:

"That undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns"

This is from the famous and extremely profound "To be or not to be that is the question ..." soliloquy.

That undiscovered country is Death. Seemingly, no traveler has returned from it. That assumes there is really a wall between life and death. One is not sure if one follows cultures where shamans exist in and communicate with the so-called dead. The ancients said the dead are all around us but we just cannot see them sensibly.

So some people erect barriers and essentially keep others yet not even dead out of their lives. One can do it with email. Set up a wall by blocking. With e-messages we can block someone. That's a heavy maneuver and full of emotion. It's shutting someone with feelings out of our lives. Happens all the time.

We can do it with modern TVs. We can exclude channels from the scan on the TV. Hence they no longer exist. At least for us, despite the good programming that might now be on those channels we have blocked. And with phones and the handy "caller id" we can do similar things.

It doesn't get us anywhere in the end. We still have to cope with thinking about those people either consciously or unconsciously or better yet, even in our dreams which are paradoxically a wake-up call to us.

Well, Pink Floyd have a societal message with their song "The Wall". They sing with a large chorus of young people "All in all we're just another brick in the wall". And it was about education too. A factory system of learning and relating.

Something to ponder.

Most walls in antiquity were rendered and torn down. We should learn from that. Open our hearts again.

The great mathematician and genius Paul Erdos whilst listening to someone's question in math, would say "My mind/brain is open to you". Dr. Erdos knew well about walls and their inefficacy.

* * *

In "Hamlet" Act III, Scene I, Hamlet says ...

To be, or not to be- that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die- to sleep.

To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death-

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns- puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.- Soft you now!

The fair Ophelia!- Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins rememb'red.