Walls

Where I grew up (a small town in the Northern Cape) there were no walls around the houses. All the yards were open at the front, with a fence at the back. This, I always thought, was because we had to constrain our dogs in order for them not to run riot in other peoples space.

As time passed residents bought the houses from the mine and gradually started building walls around it. The last time I visited almost all houses had walls around, so much so that you could only see walls from the road. In the city we are used to this. Its almost the exception that we see a house without a wall. Here we blame "crime and safety" for building higher walls and adding electric fences to it. I sometimes wonder if it isn't a matter of privacy.

Those are only the physical walls. We, as human beings, build walls around us as well. We do this because of pain: getting hurt through past experiences. In building such walls we do not allow others to see what is going on inside our souls, inside our minds. Again, its a safety issue... I write about myself here since, many times, I would rather make a joke than come about with the honest, hard hitting truth. I feel this way I protect not only myself, but also the other person.

What I am getting at is very simple. While we cannot allow everyone into our personal space, we have to share our lives. There is no purpose in living alone or just for yourself. If you are married your husband or wife is there, but that's also isn't enough. You have to get an accountable partner. Someone who will listen to you, but also share your deeper secrets and keep them. Someone who will not just listen, but give inputs, that hard hitting truth. This is to assist you to become a better person spiritually, professionally and socially.

It might not always be nice to hear, but in the time to come you will thank him/her for that...