Thoughts on Choices--Part 2 of 3

So, yesterday I talked about The Road Not Taken. Of all of Frost's poems that and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening are probably the two that everyone knows.  There are many others.  One that I memorized in either eighth or ninth grade and that has stuck with me ever since is Mending Wall (http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html).  It is about a wall that does not need to exist and how the narrator asks his neighbor why they need the wall and the neighbor just repeats the mantra "good fences make good neighbors."  But the poem begins "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."  And in the end it is about the tension between that something and the mantra of someone wanting to construct walls whether they are needed or not.  Walls create barriers.  Barriers are sometimes useful.  But I like to cross barriers.  I like to tear down barriers.  One of my colleagues is clearly a "wall person".  Let's draw boundaries. This is for you to worry about over here and this is for me to worry about over there.  Do we need clear ideas of who is responsible for what?  Of course we do.  But I like to look beyond and seek to knock down the walls, take away the barriers, and work together for good on both sides of the wall.  Perhaps we need a little of each.  And there have been times in my life when I definitely was more of a "wall person".  But at this point I clearly identify with the something that doesn't love a wall.  And it drives many of the choices I make about what drives me, what drives my career, what drives my communication, and how I want to interact with others in my career.