{"id":17277,"date":"2014-06-14T02:06:03","date_gmt":"2014-06-14T02:06:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T14:16:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T14:16:22","slug":"good-fences-make-good-neighbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=17277","title":{"rendered":"Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite poets, Pulitzer-Prize-winning American Robert Frost<\/strong> (1874-1963), in his poem \u201cMending Wall\u201d has his poem\u2019s farmer-narrator comment on a rustic neighbor\u2019s use of the adage, \u201cgood fences make good neighbors,\u201d<\/strong> while the two men work in parallel on opposite sides repairing the rock wall that defines, divides, delimits their two properties. Frost\u2019s poem calls our attention to two aspects of the wall: it protects and it impedes.
\n<\/strong>
\nIn our inter-personal relationships, we have walls, formal and informal barriers, that serve to protect us, and yet they can also prevent us from getting close to others.<\/p>\n

Even without walls or fences, property has boundaries, whether drawn on maps due to surveyors\u2019 work or merely as the acknowledged distinction between what is ours, yours, theirs. Rules indicate what belongs to us and what does not. <\/p>\n

Rules are like boundary lines. Without rules, there is anarchy. Dating, going steady, becoming engaged, marrying\u2026each of these \u201cgames\u201d has its rules, explicit or implicit. Without the rules, there is no game; our inter-personal dance becomes disordered, and we may lose our partners.
\n<\/strong>
\nManners, etiquette, convention<\/strong>\u2013these keep most people\u2019s behavior within generally expected limits, within the lines, within the rules, so one usually knows what to expect. We break these rules at our peril.<\/strong> Sometimes we find the rules\u2019 apparent artificiality too false; however, when we act spontaneously, regardless of the rules, we risk being, for example, excessively candid or overly demonstrative. The Confucian tradition emphasizes correct behavior and formal relationships among people. The Taoist tradition respects the need for moderation and modesty, but Taoism finds good reasons, at least in private, to go beyond propriety.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Americans abroad have often been viewed as too rambunctious, too lacking in self-control or proper etiquette. They threatened the \u201cwalls.\u201d In contrast, the stereotype of Asians in America is one of excessive formality, tending to give the \u201cwalls\u201d too much deference, sometimes thereby seeming inscrutable.<\/p>\n

I often wish my Chinese-American wife would be more open, more willing to push through the barriers that her modesty, humility, and propriety erect but that block candid conversation.<\/strong> Still, I am thankful for the things she has not said that might have hurt others\u2019 feelings. She, no doubt, has occasionally found me to be too \u201copen.\u201d I regret that my tendency to see and depict life largely as a comedy has made my mood out of place in some conversations or caused my wry comments to be misunderstood and unwelcome. <\/p>\n

In love, friendship, neighborliness, and in business affairs, we appropriately adjust the heights and placements of our walls,<\/strong> but we should be careful to stay on our own side, not be \u201ctransgressive.\u201d Recently, I interviewed nurses to supplement our staff [they give around-the-clock skilled nursing care at home to my wife and to my mother]. One interviewee did something seemingly trifling immediately after the interview, covertly using something of ours without asking permission. I silently ruled her out as a possible hire. Little things\u2013tell-tale signs, \u201ctells\u201d in the jargon of high-stakes card-playing\u2013reveal important truths:<\/strong> I thought that if we hired her, she was unlikely to stay within our boundaries. Each of us may do such things occasionally, inadvertently revealing something we prefer to hide.<\/p>\n

Inattention to others also creates a barrier,<\/strong> such as the one surrounding the person engrossed in reading or playing or talking or texting on his smart-phone, perhaps interacting with someone far away and yet oblivious to those nearby. As we shift our attention from such devices to the people close to us, we break down this psychological wall.<\/p>\n

Frost\u2019s \u201cMending Wall\u201d poem starts with, \u201cSomething there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall.\u201d Walls fall apart without continual mending. Disorder increases.<\/strong> The poem\u2019s narrator is ambivalent about their shared wall, even though he is collaborating in repairing it. He sees the wall as necessary in some circumstances, but not in this one, forming a needless barrier between his stand of apple trees and his neighbor\u2019s grove of pines. His neighbor disagrees, echoing his father\u2019s advice that good fences keep one neighbor from intruding on another. <\/p>\n

I am not a big fan of blank verse [\u201ctennis without the net,\u201d it breaks some of standard poetry\u2019s rules], yet I do like this rhythmic but unrhymed poem, an exception to Frost\u2018s usual poetic style. The literary \u201cwall\u201d of requiring rhyme and rhythm in a poem makes the achievement of thoughtful beauty more difficult and more impressive when successful.<\/strong> Perhaps Frost is implicitly commenting in \u201cMending Wall\u201d on a desire on his part to be free sometimes of the limits of conventional poetic forms. Like the \u201cgood girl\u201d attracted to \u201cbad boys,\u201d Frost breaks his own usual rules of rhyme, sampling thereby the \u201cwild side\u201d of blank verse.
\n<\/strong>
\nWe are left with this: fences are useful, but alienating. The \u201cbetter\u201d the fences, the more complete the separation of one person from another, and this effective separation means the pair will not likely become good friends, merely remain \u201cgood neighbors.\u201d <\/p>\n

Frost’s narrator concludes: <\/p>\n

Before I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know
\nWhat I was walling in or walling out.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Women and men, through speech and behavior, protectively erect barriers to keep from getting unwanted attention from those they expect not to be of interest to them. Building and maintaining such walls too high, too solid, too formidable keeps us from getting to know some people who would have made our lives richer. <\/p>\n

Good fences may make good neighbors, but something there is that does not love a wall.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Cooper is a retired scientist, now a writer, author and writing coach. His first book, Ting and I: A Memoir of Love, Courage and Devotion,<\/em><\/strong> was published by Outskirts Press in 2011 and is available from Outskirts Press, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, in paperback and ebook formats, as are a memoir he co-authored, The Shield of Gold<\/em><\/strong>, and a memoir he edited, High Shoes and Bloomers.<\/em><\/strong> On Twitter, he is @douglaswcooper. His blog is http:\/\/douglaswinslowcooper.blogspot.com.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite poets, Pulitzer-Prize-winning American Robert Frost (1874-1963), in his poem \u201cMending Wall\u201d has his poem\u2019s farmer-narrator comment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2663,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,1006,2110,2124],"tags":[2114,2115,2125],"class_list":["post-17277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","category-dating-relationship","category-fashion-beauty","category-interviews","tag-beauty","tag-dating","tag-interview"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"michaelly","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/957a72dc0c08f14979f0d258f5a5d70644519bea0e589bfbc83999b24053b763?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"One of my favorite poets, Pulitzer-Prize-winning American Robert Frost (1874-1963), in his poem \u201cMending Wall\u201d has his poem\u2019s farmer-narrator comment","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["Beauty","Dating & relationships","Fashion & Beauty","Interviews"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":155,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":6,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"michaelly","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=2663"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/957a72dc0c08f14979f0d258f5a5d70644519bea0e589bfbc83999b24053b763?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"Beauty<\/a> Dating & relationships<\/a> Fashion & Beauty<\/a> Interviews<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}