Fences

When our desire to protect ourselves is really squeezing the life out of us

There is a fence on a corner lot in our neighbourhood that does its job well. According to the writers of the classic book ‘Boundaries’(Henry and Townsend), fences are intended to keep the ‘bad’ out and the ‘good’ in. I always found this confusing, as if it’s always clear in our neighbourhoods and lives of what is good and what is bad. What if our desire for fences and boundaries and protection is actually slowly sucking the life out of us?

This particular fence has a solid cement base beneath it, meaning no small child could ever push it over (and there are many in this neighbourhood). The newly stained fence boards rise seven feet high into the air, preventing any intruder from climbing over. Whatever ‘bad’ they are trying to keep out, they will succeed in doing so for sure. The slats are so tightly pressed together you can barely see through it, and you have to press your eyes up to the boards to see inside. But when you do press your face on the boards and peep inside, you will see something unusual. An empty and abandoned pool sits there, unfilled and unused for years probably. Most like the real reason for the fence in the first place, and the fact that the house sits just a hop and a jump down the street from the local elementary school.

Children walk by this yard daily, dozens of them, down the street from the public school and around the corner to the subsidized housing complexes an earshot away. That must be why they saw this seven foot fence to be necessary. I guess the seven feet of fence and cement kept the chaos out but couldn’t quite keep the life in except for some tree shoots growing through the cracked base of the pool. Now when you dare to peer through the cracks all you see is cracked cement and shoots of poplar pressing through the cement. Life finds a way of cracking through our cemented fences and growing anyway.

Down the street from this lot lies a housing complex funded from the government whose fences were all knocked down recently. Every single pathetic waist high fence that gave some illusion of privacy in this fishbowl neighbourhood was demolished to make room for better ones maybe, or they just realized they never really did serve much purpose at all. They were only waist high and the spaces between the slats were so wide you could stick an arm through it. Here in this block, there is no sense of keeping anybody out of your own personal business. And now, with even the waist high illusions of privacy gone, there is nothing between the dozens of townhouses that stare at each other with empty lots in-between.

I saw two girls I know in a different neighbourhood, who live five blocks the other way in a different complex. They said casually, “we saw you tutoring yesterday, in the complex by the river.”

“Were you walking?” I asked, assuming they had been one of many groups of young teens loitering around the neighbourhood or playing basketball on the sidewalks.

“Oh no, we were inside our friend’s house, but you know, with the fences knocked down now, everybody can see everything. We just didn’t come say hi because it was windy.”

Their response was casual, as if it was normal to just know what everyone is up to at any given time in these parts. And I wonder if it really should be more normal.

Because for them, it is the norm. It is the usual to know what everyone is doing and where they’re going. It’s not abnormal to see someone you know in a different neighbourhood helping a grade three kid with division sitting on the cracked back step of the housing complex and not even think to say hi.

To be up in each other business is not always fun, and not always healthy. But I think about the cracked pool with the tree sprouts growing up within it and I wonder which is healthier. Keep the chaos and the drama and the ever peering and whispering bodies out and lowly suffocate from isolation within your own fence walls? Or live where the fences have been crashed down, where there is drama and eyes and gossip no doubt, but there is life and connection and community.

For where there is life and community and connection, there is always going to be the risk of getting hurt in the process. And in many of our desires’ to be free from this pain, we have kept the good out along with the bad. We’ve just isolated ourselves from all of it instead.

I want to walk down the street to the pool house with its tight locked fence, and ask why they built such a high fence. Why they tried to keep it all to themselves or rather, why they tried so hard to keep the ‘bad’ out and the ‘good’ in.

I want to ask, if the fence actually worked to accomplish what they wanted it to.

Because it looks to me, that it kept life out and the only life left inside is some old poplar shoots shooting through cracked cement.