Behind closed doors, liberty chokes

 I own a tiny painting entitled Yellow Door, and the whole canvas is taken up by exactly that: an old-fashioned door with four panels and a blue doorknob. With some imagination, you may perceive the light’s reflection on the knob as heart-shaped. Maybe Yellow Door depicts the entry to the artist’s childhood home or a house in which much-loved people live.

I tell inquiring visitors that the picture is in a prominent location to remind me to open as many doors as possible as I go through life. I could easily have found a more imaginative, intricate or colourful painting, but being in the business of creating opportunities, I love the symbolism. Education is all about opening doors.

This may be why I resent folks who thoughtlessly shut doors in people’s faces, leaving the desperate who come knocking out in the cold. Raised in a divided country on a continent split by the iron curtain and scarred by two world wars, I frown upon leaders who like closed doors and walls. Germany had a wall: the Berlin Wall, now widely recognised as a symbol of backward politics.

East German politicians had become obsessed with making the most fortified barrier on the planet impenetrable, even designing a “death strip”. Trip-wire machine guns, dogs, “shoot to kill” orders… ordinary people, innocently determined to reunite with loved ones on the other side, perished there.

When we close doors and build such walls, we risk losing our humanity and incite fear. We also reveal weaknesses, an inability to face the unknown or tolerate other cultures, an incapacity to discuss and overcome differences. Walls are monuments which often symbolise political incompetence to posterity. They may signal a nation’s inability to courageously face global challenges which need to be addressed collaboratively in the 21st century.

Closed doors and walls teach us to be afraid, producing paranoid, mentally inflexible citizens. Let us accept that it is not an achievement to be born in any particular nation. Living in a prosperous country, few can claim ownership of their birth luck. The rights we inherit and are inclined to defend are bestowed upon us by chance; most of us have not truly earned them. And those born into difficult circumstances do not necessarily deserve their fate either.

Persistent people power and political diplomacy brought down the Berlin Wall. We remember those who fought against barriers like this tangible symbol of the Cold War, including an American president urging the Soviet leader to “tear down this wall” in 1987 when speaking at the famous Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. How ironic, if nations would unite again thirty years later, this time to urge an American leader to tear down his own wall.

As most leaders continue to work towards tolerant societies and achieve significant improvements in global citizens’ quality of life, some nations are now afflicted by opportunistic politicians who pander to separatists. However, divisions like the Berlin Wall rarely last. It is against human nature to accept artificial separations. As social creatures, we are programmed to reach out to one another. With an innate drive to cooperate, we flourish when united. Our survival as a species depends on how we use this collaborative aptitude.

Closing a door in someone’s face is not acceptable. We may hesitate to intervene if it is not our face, but ultimately have to bear the consequences of divisive politics. Walls do not just exclude someone on the other side, they also close out opportunities and signal to neighbours a certain closed-mindedness, prejudice and fear, encouraging outsiders to judge and resent us.

Nothing good happens behind closed doors, hidden away from critical observers who could offer alternative perspectives for careful consideration. Will an American president soon “tear down” the Statue of Liberty’s plaque, which actually invites the “poor” and those “yearning to breathe free”, or would American citizens object?