It takes a lot of energy to maintain a barricade. You’ve got to keep reinforcing the mortar, keep patching the holes, keep building it higher and deeper and wider. Maybe if you camouflage it with some greenery and shrubs, people won’t notice it and they’ll stop trying to get through it. Maybe they’ll leave you alone. Ah, how good a respite would be from the constant maintenance of the wall.

I do have a choice. I could let them in. That would be so much easier, just to let them have their way. Just to say yes and have it over with. Let them trample over the rubble I have been maintaining for, let’s see, how long now?

There’s another option. I could open the door and invite them in for some civil conversation. Oh, my heart races in fear at the thought of that. Admit them, engage them in conversation, get to know them and them, me. Listen and speak. Consider the pro’s and con’s. Arrive at some conclusion.

At the end, perhaps we would go our separate ways. Or perhaps we would clean up the rubble together. Either way, wall maintenance would no longer be needed. Just think what I could do with the energy I’m no longer expending on it!

Indecision, procrastination, ‘further study.’ Unfinished stories, interrupted songs, incomplete sentences. These have their price. It’s not just the holding off what’s on the outside, it’s the preventing expression of what’s on the inside that costs so much. Attack and retreat both have their costs, but holding the line may be the most devious of all. It saps and spoils.

What if we invited that which waits in to meet the one who is dying to have voice and bypassed the wall maintenance all together?