Barriers - It’s strange how in such a short distance, in a very small physical space, the visual aspect can chance so much. Whether you are on our way to Belgium or Germany, both so close to Maastricht, the first city after the border is always different. Not just on what concerns the buildings in themselves and their architecture, but also on the impression the places convey and, above all, people.

Explaining this difference I claim to exist is not an easy task. You can only feel it. It’s a bit like swing in jazz. You can understand what it is when you’ve seen it, when you’ve felt the beat hitting your skin, when you’ve experienced your fingers breaking free, gaining control over themselves and making your music independently of you, melting with the rhythm. But you cannot explain what swing is. There are even great players that refuse to give classes believing it’s impossible to teach it.

Nature cannot be responsible for that difference. Hardly could she (I’ll assume we’re talking about a lady, hardly could such a beautiful thing belong to the male gender) change that much in such scarce kilometers. That’s where we enter the picture. Only human barriers have the power to perform such a thing, like those that we call borders that I guess only exist to show us how fundamentally equal entities (within their evident physical diversity) like human beings, can become so different according to the environment where they were born and raised and where they fit in.

Next time, all about diversity.