Borders

I went camping recently. That was an interesting experience. It got me thinking about borders.

See, the place where we went, it was close to the American border. I have no sense of direction, but I knew this because I got a text on my phone: “Welcome to the US! Standard rates are 15c/mine (local & home), 5c/txt & 5c/MB.”

You know, borders are weird. Walking the boundary line between cities is always strange. A little step and you’re in a whole different municipality. I mean, there’s nothing physically dividing these two places, yet somehow it’s dictated that there is a divide. Countries are even weirder. There’s nothing really separating you, but a few meters and now you can’t carry a gun. You’re not even allowed to cross that line without a prior inspection.

One of my friends once recounted to me about a time that she crossed the border illegally through a forest. Not to do anything bad; no, her family just went to have some fun on America’s beaches. They returned after a day.

I know there are people who believe that the entire earth should be connected, and that we should be able to walk the lands without disruption, as our early predecessors did. It truly is a fanciful belief, but the reality is that us seven billion need governing. And so we have our borders, wherein past a few kilometres, people eat differently, speak differently, and ultimately live very differently.

At least most continents feel intuitive; you’ve got a vast ocean of separation. Of course there’s a giant culture divide.

Let’s go micro. As a casual hikki, I don’t go out very much. And to further the stereotype, I don’t like to open my windows or blinds very much, either. It’s only because I’m not a fan of how natural light looks in my room, and I don’t like bugs. So I’m not very accustomed to the outdoors.

Walls are borders, too: borders that separate the indoors and the pleine air. Even people who get a healthy dose of the outside world must understand that there is a fundamentally different feel when you’re out compared to when you’re cocooned in.

Being outside is… liberating. You can run as far as you want, in any direction, go anywhere. Well, not anywhere, but we’re back to the talk about national borders again.

There is no ceiling. For some, like me, that’s too much freedom. So we hide out in our houses and live in a completely different world.

Now, camping is a wholly different story. Tents have walls, but they’re thin and made of nylon. So being in a tent still feels like you’re somewhat indoors, due to the dampened lighting and inability to, you know, see past three feet. But it still feels outside, because you can hear the people walking outside and the ground is all bumpy. Being in a tent is like being in the middle of inside and outside.

And now let’s talk macro. Why was I, a casual hikki, outside in the first place? Well, I’d read on Reddit that there would be meteor showers that night. So it was the perfect day to cross camping off my bucket list.

Lots of people were there. Amateurs campers, families, and space fans. Some of those space fans had telescopes. I got to see Saturn, you see. It was mostly a ball of fuzz, but you could see the rings. It was definitely Saturn, and it was beautiful.

Of course, Venus will forever be more beautiful.

That brings us to the last border. Earth’s atmosphere. The only thing separating us from space. I guess. Where does space start? That’s a question for another Google search.

Point is, we’re all living our lives down here and we’re all so busy. Yet at night, when we look up at the stars, we realise that everything is truly meaningless. I mean, look how small we are, right?! The sun is the biggest thing in our lives, but look at Betelgeuse!

Is there a word for that? That kind of… lucidity?

All these borders in our lives seem so well-defined until we become conscious of them and suddenly they all break down. When I live and do things inside my house, it’s clear that there’s an “inside”, which is here, and an “outside”, which is there. And those are two different worlds that never get to intersect, and I am safe here. Except that’s not true, because I can hear the cars outside beeping and I can stick my arm out my window and then where am I? In a tent?

And America is America and only America. But it’s not, because American politics are so influential to the rest of the world and because the US’ culture is a conglomerate of other ethnicities and histories. Suddenly your slice of the sidewalk isn’t so clean anymore. How many footprints have been planted here? How many will be? How far can I walk before I am lost?

Your life is your life and that crying baby on the swings is SEP. Until you realise that the blood underneath your soles was shed by your neighbour’s sister’s dog when it was hit by your ex girlfriend’s car the other day and you stepped on its dead body in the middle of the night when you were taking the trash out because you forgot it was Thursday. You look up at the sky and there are stars and they are so far away. Your life is down on earth and the stars are in space and the two things could not be further apart. Yet where is the boundary?