Beyond the Fence

Life isn’t one look, nor one interpretation.

Looking at the view that unfolds before my eyes, I want to spend a few words on how our own ways—our own belief systems—can so easily become a construct: a fence we initially learn to love because it offers protection. Only later do we discover that this same fence becomes the line of our horizon, a horizon we grow so accustomed to that we forget we placed it there in the first place.

Life has gifted me the ability to travel, to explore, to taste existence a little more deeply than I once did.

I am blessed to cross seas I could once only read about, only to realize that it was never about crossing seas at all.

It was about finding the parts of myself that had been placed beyond the fence.

Parts I forgot—at least my logical mind did—but that were buried somewhere else. Like bones in the ground, traces of my former selves, my avatars.

This journey became an excavation: not of places, but of layers. Digging through what was learned, expected, and repeated, until I reached what remained underneath, the unpolished, unnamed self waiting to be remembered.

In these journeys, I find encounters: people who, like me, heard a calling from beyond the fence and, instead of being afraid, chose to follow it. Like me, they didn’t know where those sounds would lead.

So they crossed, and crossed again, embracing the darkness within themselves, a self that was not “trimmed,” but a forest of wild, undisciplined thoughts, far removed from the old stories and patterns kept safely inside the fence.

These beings know that to reach “the pretty,” we must first understand the darkness and our shadows.

Experiencing the bleeding, being hurt, even witnessing the self die a few times before uncovering what remains: the bones. The ones underneath. The ones that hide. Those bones of the self. Those roots are our true compass. Beings like this recognize one another. They recognize the scars that lead to light.

Throwing the heart, the body, the eyes over the fence.

Sailing into the unknown.

Walking without always knowing.

These are beams of existence.

These are worthy of every heartbeat.