A Meeting Place

Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine an old, drystone 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. 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 we mistake it for a boundary to be moved backwards or forwards, or knocked down.

​

Instead, the point of the wall is this: to just help us say hello.

​

The wall doesn’t stop us from meeting each other; it simply lets us stand back and see someone more clearly.... to notice, maybe, that we're different; but there is also a yearning to connect with them, whoever they might be.

​

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