The Illusion of Boundaries

Morning walks have become my canvas, my scribbling pad, my teacher. I learn, I understand, I a forced to think and it gives me freedom to use the colours of my imagination to script whatever I desire. I have started loving these  walks. This morning, as I walked briskly around the walking track in our society premises, mind already occupied with the logistics of our upcoming travel, a simple moment sparked a cascade of thoughts. We needed visas — permission to step onto a piece of another piece of land on this planet. The process was meticulous: forms, fees, approvals, stamps. And then, just as I was mulling over these human-made restrictions, an egret flew in from our neighbouring society, picked up an insect from our lawn, and flew back to a tree in the adjacent property.

No visa. No borders. No restrictions. Just life moving as it naturally does.

At that very moment, the large tree standing on the boundary wall shed a leaf, which drifted gently onto ‘our’ land. A stray dog trotted across an invisible property line and was shooed away to run into someone else’s property. The wind in the meanwhile, carried pollen, seeds, and scents from one place to another, unaware that humans had assigned ownership to pieces of the earth. I saw some bees moving from one colourful flower to another. I don't think it needed a visa or permission to suck honey from specific flowers. Everything around me flowed, unbothered by the concept of boundaries—except us. I smiled.

The Walls We Build

It starts small.

A stranger enters an elevator, and we instinctively step away, claiming our personal space. We put up fences around homes, install security systems, and draw invisible property lines in our minds. Villages, once open and welcoming, now have locked gates and security guards. I have seen people fight for inches of land while building boundary walls around their houses. Societies define who belongs within their compounds. Cities segregate neighborhoods. States claim rivers as their own. Countries dictate who may enter, who may stay, and who must leave. And then there is airspace—restricted zones, flight paths, territories of the sky.

We fight over things as transient as smells from a neighbor’s kitchen, as if ownership extends to the wind that carries them. Yet, when the rain clouds form, we do not demand that they respect our imaginary borders. The monsoon does not require a passport.

The Great Irony

And then, there’s space—vast, infinite, and indifferent to our boundaries. The same person who instinctively moves away in an elevator will look up at the night sky and feel small, insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. We draw lines on land, claim ownership of oceans, and designate no-fly zones in the sky, but out there, among the stars, we are nothing but a tiny, fleeting presence. We do not own a single speck of the cosmos.

Yet, we pretend.

We carve out pieces of the planet and declare, “This is mine.” But was it really ours before we were born? Will it remain ours after we die? What right do we have over something so temporary?

The Real Question

As I continued my walk, I wondered: Who are we to control?

We spend our lives defining what is ours and what is not. We build walls, erect fences, and create laws that tell us where we may go and where we may not. But nature reminds us, over and over again, that these boundaries exist only in our minds.

Maybe, just maybe, we need to unlearn this obsession with control. Maybe we need to observe the egret, the busy bee, the untiring ant, the drifting leaf, the wandering stray, the rivers, the oceans, the unending sky and ask ourselves: 

What if we simply let things flow?