Thoughts On The State Of Things: Walls Or Bridges?

 We have all had occasion to visit a doctor’s or dentist’s office at one time or another. This usually involves spending time in the waiting room surrounded by other people who don’t feel good, uncomfortable lobby furniture, and an endless supply of outdated magazines with the recipient’s name obscured by magic marker scribble. Through the years waiting rooms have changed to include flat screen televisions tuned to benign programming that nobody really watches and “serve yourself” coffee or tea in small Styrofoam cups. Play corners for small children have appeared featuring trucks, cars, dolls, coloring books, and a host of other toys to occupy them as they wait to see the doctor. No play corner would be complete without the universal, quintessential, time proven toy of toys; a set of wooden blocks. Have you ever sat and watched children play with wooden blocks?  Outside of an occasional block ramp that launches a truck or car through the air drawing the ire of a parent, walls begin to appear. It isn’t long before little territories are “blocked” off and boundaries are set. Favorite toys are placed inside these areas for safe keeping from the other children. 

Building walls is a skill that seems to come naturally to us, even at very young ages. Kids don’t need to be taught how to place one block upon another. When I was a kid eating breakfast at our dining room table I would surround my area with cereal boxes, separating my area from that of my other siblings. We often got into fights over the “Economy sized” Corn Flakes box because it was usually larger than all the other boxes.  Through the ages of history mankind has been very adept at building walls. There are walls built to keep people and things in and walls built to keep people and things out. There are walls built to separate and divide. The Berlin Wall separated people and ideology. Walls have been built to separate and define kingdoms. The Great Wall of China stands as a monument that can be seen from space. We are not only good at wall building; we are also very good at separating ourselves from each other. 

Consider for a moment what it takes to build a bridge. Bridge building requires much more skill than wall building. Of course, the purpose for even building a bridge differs a great deal from the purpose of building a wall.  Bridges span distances to connect what had previously been disconnected. To build a bridge the right place has to be chosen, the right design employed, and the right material used. Of consideration here is the location and purpose for the bridge. Have you ever visited the Mackinaw Bridge in upper Michigan or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco? These are engineering wonders that connect what had been considered at one time impossible to connect. I grew up not far from the Rainbow Bridge over the Niagara Gorge near the Niagara Falls. In those days you could ride your bike across into Canada for ten cents, what a thrill!

There are many things that stand as walls in our society. These things seek to artificially divide us as Americans. We are divided over socioeconomic lines, religion, race, creed, culture, and language. Political parties seek to divide us into Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Green, and the list goes on ad infinitum.   “Hot button” issues erupt in our faces to further separate us from one another. Recently the issue is either union or nonunion. Modern technology has provided so many ways to connect us, yet we are so readily divided. 

Consider this, in his farewell address to the nation in 1796, George Washington spoke of the absolute need for national unity. He warned against the artificial divisions caused by political parties and forces that would separate what otherwise would be happily united. “it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”

The question is not one of Republican versus Democrat or union supporter versus non-union. We are all Americans first. We need to stop yelling at each other and building walls between each other. The truth usually exists somewhere in the middle between two arguing factions. What we need here are statesmen who can build bridges and unite us together as Americans. Bridges built in these times will stand as monuments in the future. 

And these are my thoughts on the state of things, respectfully submitted.

Michael Marsh, Co-founder of the Parma Patriots