Day 205: Too Many Fences

I mean that literally. There are too many fences in the world today, including my own. Despite keeping my dogs safely tucked away in my backyard, I've grown to very much dislike the concept of the fence. A fence separates. It blocks views. It divides and conquers. I look out the back windows and deck door of my house and all I see are fences. Brown ones. White ones. Chain-link ones. All there to keep something in and keep something out. 

Years ago, it wasn't that way. I could look out from my elevated deck and see across the neighborhood without a maze laying out before me created from intertwining and connected panels of wood and plastic. I could see the neighborhood boys playing baseball in the yards flowing one into the other, without any barriers separating them. I could see all the way down the block with no obstructions. But no more. There is no straight view. There is no vision that's unobstructed. 

When did we become a nation so concerned with secluding ourselves from each other? I don't know, but it definitely clears up a lot of the questions floating about concerning trust and privacy and so on. I'm all for privacy. I'm all for the protection a fence provides. But damn if all these fences don't create what has essentially amounted to a bunch of islands onto ourselves. Are our backyards really so valuable and prestine  that we need to keep everyone else out. What are we all doing behind these wooden walls that we can't let our neighbors peak in? It makes me wonder if we just assume the worst about those living among us and make them prove their worth over time. It makes me wonder if society has disintegrated to such an extent, we'll ever trust one another implicitly again. 

I guess America has always somewhat been about creating borders and barriers. We carved the land into territories and later states. We keep cattle in vs. roaming freely. We devised reservations for those we didn't want to look at any longer to reside on. We've sprung up gated communities and private properties and secluded edifices at about every turn. I suppose the proliferation of fences was only natural. Over years and years, we created the mindset that "what's mine is mine." We separate the rich from the poor. The have from the have-nots. We built fences out of stone, steel, concrete, and brick. We supplied them with electricity. We put guards at their entrances. 

Some days, I wish I had never put a fence up. It's ugly, and it's limiting. It's confining. I find it funny that we've gone to great lengths to build house after house in such close proximity, only to stick fences up in between them. Welcome to the neighborhood.