Tearing Down Walls

<p><strong>Like Berlin we all have a wall an inner wall that needs to be torn down. It's a wall we built at a young age when socialization began and we needed a barrier behind which we could hide that part of ourselves that was unacceptable to our mothers as well as important others. What we hide is the shadow. To conceal it we create a wall that we call the persona. </strong></p><p><strong>To be a Berliner is about starting out as a unified whole as we all started out as infants as Berlin itself started out. It is then to be split in two with a wall erected between the two parts as Berlin was and as we all were when socialization began shattering our original wholeness. </strong></p><p>Finally it is to become one again as Berlin has done and as we hope to do if we do our work and if we are lucky. As in the case of Berlin the wall keeps us from becoming all we can be. Berlin thus is a metaphor for the enlargement of personality that can occur when we like Berlin's inhabitants tear down that wall and become bigger richer freer and more diverse and democratic. In this sense we are all potentially Berliners.</p><p><br></p>