How Deep Are Those Lines Between Countries?

H

 

Borders signify change and a new beginning. They’re a crossing over into unknown territory, evoking feelings of possibility that contain great hope as well as great fear. But borders are also a closing off. When we enter new terrain, we’re closing off what came before both physically and philosophically. We can never go back. Nature allows no birth without a corresponding death.

Major life changes often slip by unnoticed. We never think to mourn the passing of our childhood until middle age. But I stopped one day in the middle of a dusty road at the edge of Nicaragua to look back at where I’d come from. I shed my skin, sloughed off what I’d been before, and emerged transformed and renewed. I put one foot forward, then another, and I stepped into a new future.

 

 

 

About the author

Ryan Murdock

Author of A Sunny Place for Shady People and Vagabond Dreams: Road Wisdom from Central America. Host of Personal Landscapes podcast. Editor-at-Large (Europe) for Canada's Outpost magazine. Writer at The Shift. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

3 Comments

NEWSLETTER

Sign up for my entertaining email newsletter


Recent Posts

Archives