Everyday Ethics: Fences and neighbors [Opinion] – Reading Eagle

"Good fences make good neighbors," says the neighbor in Robert Frost's famous poem "The Mending Wall."

Having heard Frost's words used to defend building fences and walls, I'm not sure that's what he writes in the poem, and it's certainly not what I believe makes good neighbors. I prefer bridges rather than walls. They connect rather than divide people.

In the poem, Frost questions his neighbor's adage that good fences make good neighbors.

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.

That wants it down.

Before a wall is built, I'd like to know who is walled out and also who is being walled in. After all, walls not only keep people out of somewhere but keep them in as well. And walls, of course, are not only physical structures but also mental. You can wall people in by promoting only one point of view and denying opposing points of view. Free, responsible speech is not only necessary for dialogue but democracies.

I think I prefer building bridges rather than walls between people. After all, you can't really keep ideas walled in. A great and good idea goes around, under, and through walls as President Ronald Reagan knew when he challenged then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down" the Berlin Wall, which separated a country.

Of course, nations need boundaries to describe their territories. So, too, do individuals need boundaries to tell others what they consider fair and just limits to relationships. Without boundaries, people can lose all sense of their limits and sometimes sacrifice their integrities.

I've often thought Frost was arguing that "good fences make good neighbors," but reading the poem again I think he felt the opposite: "Something there is that doesn't like a wall."

Most poems begin from some experience in a poet's life. I can imagine Frost talking with a neighbor about the wall between their homes. My column and a poem arose as I await a fence being constructed around a portion of my backyard. But it's not being built to keep my neighbor off my property but my new dog in my yard, Being a beagle who follows the scents of the wild to lure her anywhere, she needs the fence to be safe.

I'd still rather build bridges than walls, especially when it comes to new ideas and people. I'd rather take the time to learn something new than simply repeat the old, time-worn saying that "good fences make good neighbors." Good bridges make good neighbors, or as 17th century English poet John Donne wrote: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main"

John C. Morgan is a writer and teacher. His columns appear here each Wednesday in this newspaper. A collection of his poetry, "Thin Places," is available on Amazon.

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Everyday Ethics: Fences and neighbors [Opinion] - Reading Eagle