Border crossing

Thresholds to people’s hearts

Because of my job and my calling, I have crossed hundreds of national and international borders. Every time it has been different — no border was ever the same. Sometimes things have gone smoothly, and people barely noticed that a stranger was stepping into their homeland. On other occasions the border guards, who maybe were having a bad day, treated me like a criminal; on yet other occasions, a guard and I would end up at the bar, swapping stories over a glass of wine.

No matter what, each crossing is a genuine conversion experience. Faced with the uncertainty of the passage, feeling anxious and apprehensive, I ask myself the three existential questions formulated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant: Who am I? Where am I going? What am I doing? Crossing a border makes me question my identity (my past), my plans (my future), and the meaning of what I am going through (my present).

Trying to find answers to these questions (such an arduous task in the face of such simplicity!) is beneficial. It helps with crossing the border but, even more, it helps make sense of the many borders that intercross our personal and social lives.

Our hearts are divided by borders. I like this person but not this other person; an imaginary line separates my friends from my enemies; I love people on the right but hate people on the left or vice versa. Our cities are divided by borders, too — there are good and bad neighborhoods, “our” neighborhoods and the neighborhoods where “other people” live. Countries are divided by borders: the north and the south, the coastal communities and the heartland.

Continents are divided by borders: immigrants press at them, loaded in rickety boats or crammed in container ships, some braving the crossing by foot in the hope of a paycheck earned with dignity. We have built financial walls that keep others out, new versions of the Berlin wall, monuments to the same mistrust. We have created barriers between whole civilizations: artificial borders between the Western and the Muslim world, the Buddhist world and the Hindu world. Finally, we have drawn a line between the rich and the poor, who often live so close to each other, separated and united by the same sorrows.

Getting into the habit of asking ourselves Kant’s three questions when we cross national frontiers is a good exercise in learning who we are, where we are going, what we need to do. This practice will inevitably lead us to understand that borders, lines and walls are not drawn to keep us apart, but also primarily so that we can cross them. Polish sociologist Zygmund Bauman said, “The future depends on the dialogue we will be able to create alongside our borders.”

Since humankind’s journey toward universal brotherhood has still a way to go, borders will be with us a while longer. But it seems important that, from both sides of our walls and fences, we talk to each other, find points of agreement, maybe even invite each other across. Another Pole, journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, said that “we are the other.” I agree: borders are thresholds to other people’s hearts.

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