Borderlines

       Yesterday night I was at a friends house. He lives on the north side of Isabella street. The border between Evanston and Wilmette runs down the center of that street, and I realized as I was driving home that if he lived on the other side of the street, I never would have known him. He wouldn't have gone to WJHS, and he would begoing to Evanston High School instead of New Trier, and we would never have met. It was interesting to look down the street and know that someone my age living to my left has a similar life to mine, while someone living to my right has had a totally different set of experiences. The situation reminded me of the field trip we took last November, when we passed the large park (I can't remember the name of the park) and went from a fairly affluent neighborhood to a run-down, more impoverished neighborhood. There too an invisible border separated people with two different sets of experiences.
       It dawned on me how much impact location has on everyone's life. Americans separate much of public life geographically, so that in many cases which side of the border you live on can be destiny. This isn't just for schools, like the NT and Evanston High School border. As we saw in Chicago, economic success can depend on the neighborhood as well. If you were planning to start a business, which side of the park would you want to be on? And what would you do if you couldn't afford to be on the "right" side?
       Something important that I'm not sure many fully appreciate, me included, is how close the north shore is to areas that are vastly less wealthy than we are. A few miles and the township border is all that really separate New Trier and Evanston.

What do you think about the effect of borders on life?

Image Credit: http://cnsnews.com/image/mexico-border-4