Barriers: Part 6

For those that have followed my blog for a while, you'll remember a few earlier posts on barriers (pts 1-5). For those that haven't followed from the beginning, it'll make more sense if you go through the other parts first, but the brief background is this: I spent a weekend in Bo Kaap, a neighborhood in Cape Town, South Africa (this was actually almost exactly a year ago now). When I returned to Stellenbosch (the city I was studying in last July-November) I reflected a bit on the idea of cultural barriers and wrote down my thoughts. This is the final installment of the essay:

A child from the Pebbles Project wearing my
             sunglasses near Stellnbosch, South Africa

Moving away from houses we now come to a pocket sized barrier. Now what, you ask, could provide a barrier and fit in your pocket? Sunglasses, of course! (It is important to note here that much of what can be said of sunglasses can be applied to other articles of clothing/accessories, but it is not pertinent to dwell on many of the same thing so I am going to just use sunglasses.) My sunglasses are made of black frames with a fairly simple, yet for me slightly flashy opaque swirl design on the frames and slightly purplish fading lenses. They serve their purpose of protecting my eyes from the sun well (which in the future I will be glad of when I don’t need real glasses or go blind. The same can be said of clothes/sunblock and skin cancer). They also serve as a little fashion statement. Whether they are up or down they add a little to my outfit. I can leave them on my head when I am out of direct sunlight and they can then function as my headband (gotta love multi functional accessories!). Sunglasses go beyond fashion and functionality, however; they also serve as a barrier between me and those around me. When I put them on I can look around, roll my eyes, or make eye contact, without the other person knowing what my eyes are doing. As eyes are such a huge component of non verbal communication, this barrier between us is shutting them out of some of my communication clues. They allow me to take away some of the emotion of what I am saying, which serves as a protection for me. Or I can allow someone to come in. I can put my sunglasses up and look straight at the person. I am giving that person permission to enter my emotions and thoughts, and to better understand what I am communicating. While I am not spelling out all that different clothes and accessories do as barriers, I urge you to think about what the clothes you or others around you say. They serve as an outward, non verbal form of communication and personal expression.

As I was hinting at with sunglasses, we each have emotional barriers. These are perhaps the most powerful of all. While it is possible to break any physical barrier with the use of physical force which anyone can apply, it is not so easy to break emotional barriers. Under this term “emotional” lies the broad spectrum of cultural and personal emotions. These are barriers that cannot be seen so easily as a wall or a door, but to the trained eye are more evident and perhaps even more potent.

Cultural barriers are, technically speaking, cultural differences. They may include simple things to grasp such as language or food, but they certainly include much harder aspects that can hardly be described. As proof of this, think about the United States. Take someone from San Francisco and someone from Los Angeles. These two individuals will have virtually the same language and same accent, yet culturally, they come from very different ways of life. While they both may have the Californianess in them, the one from San Francisco will likely be more laid back, and I dare to stereotype and say more hippie. The one from Los Angeles will likely be in a rush to get somewhere and not be pleased that you have taken more than two seconds of his time without having any connections to the Hollywood industry. It is not completely impossible to overcome cultural barriers, but it is nearly impossible to fully assimilate into a culture that is not your own. This is because there is so much memory and history derived in a culture that cannot be taken away from a person trying to leave a culture. Nor can a new culture be fully understood if a person has other memories and histories that contradict the new ones. In this way, over time, all cultures are lost to changing peoples, but also new cultures are developed. In order for a person to have any hope of learning a new culture, he must immerse himself in it firsthand. Otherwise he will miss out on the many indescribable intricacies that make a culture unique.

Personal emotional barriers are yet the hardest to cross or understand. Each individual has his or her own barrier that only he or she can control. It is a barrier without doors, but with many windows. Over each of these windows we choose when to draw the curtain. Sometimes we only draw the curtain part way and sometimes there are blinds instead of a curtain. With practice you can learn to see through the windows of a person’s emotions, but you can never fully understand them. Just like culturally we each have different histories and memories, personally we each have different histories and memories. Even siblings have different experiences. We can teach others what makes us tick, and they may get what we are trying to communicate, but they can never fully understand. Some people have a barrier that is extra thick. They do not let anyone see through and this closes them off from the world. Others have barriers that are virtually all window with curtain drawn open. Some people have barriers that are shattered and have to be rebuilt. Some see their barriers start to shatter and so they fortify it, and in doing so shut out the outside world. Again, I am now going to ask you to observe and think. What can you see for barriers in the people around you? How about in yourself? What do these barriers mean? You may be surprised what you find you project and what others project when you really think about it. But then, thinking about it will also give you greater understanding and respect for not only those around you, but also for yourself.