This thought experiment was inspired by my life long love of the Frost poem, Mending Wall. And as I see the toxic environment we live in on social media, I just pray for peace- civil discourse, and respect. And both sides are at fault!
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Link to the song:
We built these walls so high, brick by stubborn brick
You stand your ground, and I stand mine, we never seem to click
We see the same horizon, but it looks so different here
You're calling out your logic, and I just cover my ears
Every answer's a question, but neither one replies
Caught up in our echoes, we only hear our sides
Rivals in our trenches, staring across the line
We’re just two stubborn hearts, convinced that we're both right
No trust, no truth, no healing, just distance and despair
We're mending walls between us, and neither of us cares
Rivals in our trenches, where the healing never starts
We've drawn the lines in dirt, but we’ve both torn apart
You build your truth in stone, I stack mine up in clay
We tend to what divides us, and let the roots decay
There's a question in the silence that neither wants to ask
Why we can't tear this wall down, instead we hold our masks
Gaslight and misinformation, both play our twisted game
But through the smoke, I wonder—do we even know our names?
Rivals in our trenches, staring across the line
We’re just two stubborn hearts, convinced that we're both right
No trust, no truth, no healing, just distance and despair
We're mending walls between us, and neither of us cares
Rivals in our trenches, where the healing never starts
We've drawn the lines in dirt, but we’ve both torn apart
"Good fences make good neighbors," so you always say
But what’s a wall that shuts us out, but keeps the hurt in play?
If I just reach across the line, could we somehow build a bridge?
Or are we forever digging deep into this bitter ridge?
Rivals in our trenches, staring across the line
We’re just two stubborn hearts, convinced that we're both right
No trust, no truth, no healing, just distance and despair
We're mending walls between us, and neither of us cares
Rivals in our trenches, where the healing never starts
We've drawn the lines in dirt, but we’ve both torn apart
We built these walls so high, thinking they’d protect
But all we've done is trap ourselves in the space where we forget
That rivals in the trenches are just people, after all
Who've built their walls so strong, they can't hear the other’s call
Here is Frost's poem for comparison-
Mending Wall by Robert Frost
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
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