BORDERS

A country is, at its core, very simple: a place where we live together. We draw borders out of pure necessity. So we know where responsibility begins, and who organizes what. Handy. Logical.

Until things go wrong in our heads.

A practical line becomes our line.

The land becomes our land.

And before you know it, you confuse an administrative agreement with who you are deep down inside.

Children learn: I am Dutch, I am Russian, I am American.

Harmless, right?

But when did a useful description become a suffocating identity?

A line on a map cannot cry. A country feels no fear. A flag is never insulted. We do.

We fight for a piece of land because memories live there, because our dead are buried there and our language is spoken there. We are willing to die for a border…not for the line itself, but because we have made the line part of ourselves.

Until you board an airplane and look down.

I see rivers. Forests. Mountains, cities, and villages.

But however sharply I gaze… nowhere do I see a border. We drew those ourselves.

Borders are brilliant for organizing the world. But why do we use them to tear each other apart?

As A Course in Miracles reminds us: beyond all the labels of nationality, religion, and history, our separation was never the deepest truth.

Deep down, we are O N E

Isn’t that precisely what we have forgotten?

With love and light,

G.