Introduction
A fence is a barrier or boundary to keep privacy. A famous poem by Robert Frost uses the proverb ‘good fences make good neighbours’ and beautifully describes the idea of barriers between friendship, communication, people and a sense of security it gives. This implies that maintaining fencing between neighbours, can preserve harmony between them and the absence of boundary can lead to conflict of interests resulting in bitterness between the two parties.
The Importance of Fence
The poem presents the similarities between home and the country in terms of both reality of life and scenario. The chances of intruding upon each other’s zone are eliminated by making a fence. The above fact also holds true in terms of relationships, colleagues, neighbouring countries or everything else in life.
However, to maintain communication instead of building a stonewall, a low fence should be built just to maintain a distance that allows privacy.
The Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China, walls separating Israelis from Palestinians or Americans from Mexicans are few of the famous walls in the world. Nations worldwide are trying to ensure robust boundaries to stop cross-border infiltration. One living example is that of India which in its bid to prevent any possible dispute with its land-locked neighbours has tried to make good boundaries. Some of the major border areas made by India keeping an eye on immediate neighbours, China and Pakistan, are the Wagah Border, Siachen glacier and Arunachal Pradesh. There are many instances in the past when the creation of weak fences led to infiltration from either side, which disrupted the harmony between the countries and resulted in discords and violent encounters. Taking lessons from the past, countries have been able to create fences resulting in reduction of border disputes.
One school of thought is also of the view that keeping some kind of boundary evokes feelings of great longing and thus maintaining harmony amongst people. An obvious example is the affectionate way the people meet after long period of separation.
Neighbours may be in friendly terms with each other but keeping a fence is essential as it ensures some kind of separation to maintain privacy. There may arise a probability of too much friendliness leading to intrusion on privacy of an individual.
In present times, people want to avoid getting affected by any sentiment or words and thus have begun to keep a certain distance from others. Hence, in addition to preserving the privacy, keeping fences or boundaries also helps one in maintaining harmony and peace both at home and surroundings.
Drawbacks of Creating a Fence
However, creation of a boundary also has its side effect of leading one to isolation. In past, porous fences enabled neighbours to discuss their daily affairs and share each other’s concerns. However, in the present times, people are not even aware of their immediate neighbours because of boundaries. Due to creation of boundary, people may not be able to share common concerns over their needs and come out at a solution that can lead to dispute in the long term as people have difference of opinions. It could be difficult to cross borders for the citizens of one country sharing relationship with their neighbours as the long procedures and delays in getting approval for the same could be cumbersome.
The same holds true even in building personal relationships, when people, who build walls around them, before even talking to others, lose out the opportunity to know someone as good as a friend, bearing some preconceived notions in their mind. In future, such people would be devoid of close friendship or true intimacy because of the barrier they created towards their relationships much before.
Man is a social animal and creation of a wall leads to less movement of people, which in turn, results in elimination of any social interaction. For the world witnessing fast unwarranted changes, this can have severe outcomes on society where people even after having all means of communications are drifting apart fast from their near and dear ones. The progress of civilisation is caused due to different social, cultural and technological aspects. Without social interaction, it would not be possible for people from various cultures to come together resulting in elimination of free exchange of ideas and growth of society and its citizens. This in turn can have a serious impact on the growth of human beings over a long time.
Conclusion
The proverb ‘Good fences make good neighbours’, in line with the age-old belief, is applicable even in the present context. However, it is to be noticed that these boundaries do not become communication barriers for people to interact with each other. Robert Frost, the poet, may have had his own view in favour of removal of barriers to ensure hassle-free communication but he failed to visualise the multifaceted aspects having both advantages and disadvantages associated with it. The purpose of putting barriers should be to ensure that privacy is kept intact, no intrusion takes place on the borders and there exists goodness of relationships at various level all times.