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A Meeting Place

Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine a low wall, elbow height, between you and another person when you’re with them. This isn’t a high barricade, dividing people from one another – quite the opposite. It’s a meeting place.

It’s something to lean on... something that signifies each person leaning over the wall is from a different world, with their own wisdom and lifestyle; it’s a place where you can look over and greet the other person, and where they can look over and see what life is like for you.

But we sometimes focus too much on the wall itself, and mistake it for a boundary to be moved backwards or forwards, or knocked down.

Instead, the point of the wall is this: to forget about the wall. It's simply there to help us say hello.

 

The wall doesn’t stop us from meeting each other; it just lets us stand back and see someone more clearly.... or maybe not quite get them at first; and that's alright! Because misunderstanding someone helps them to rephrase their perspective, and so know themselves better too.

And perhaps, the wall gives someone the choice to say, ‘Hop over’, or ‘Come in through the gate’, and invite the other person into their world.

By meeting someone else, I also greet the Me who’s doing the meeting - I see myself in a new light. Because we all need to connect with others; and to do that, we need to know we are separate.

 

© A.J. Quarmby

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