How Quickly Perspective Can Change When You Jump Over A Fence
—How Quickly Perspective Can Change When You Jump Over A Fence—
Don’t you agree? You’ve probably seen it before. The fence—be it wood, chainlink, vinyl, tortoise—separating your yard (or your parking spot or whatever) from your neighbor’s. The mysteries that lie beyond. The dangers. Do you climb it? Discover the other side? Or do you leave it be? Let it sit there, idle, forever locked away in the annals of your brain, never to see the light of day—or night. The choice is yours.
No, before you go all conspiracy theory on me, this isn’t some far-flung metaphor trying to make sense of the world. I’m serious. How many of us know our neighbors? Like really know our neighbors. Probably not very many. A step further: How many of us have been inside our neighbors’ homes? Probably even fewer.* It’s a strange thing, seeing someone almost every day and knowing so little about them. What are their interests? What do they do in their free time? Do they eat breakfast everyday? Or just a protein bar in the car? What grinds their gears? What exists beyond that damn fence?
Last week, I watched the new Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd film, Friendship. In it there is a scene in which Robinson’s character, Craig—via a running motif in the film—runs (pun intended) a package to his neighbor, Austin’s (played by Paul Rudd) home, that was incorrectly delivered to Craig’s address. Craig, to put it gently, is a bit of a social misfit. Upon arriving at Austin’s home, Craig makes the choice to throw the package over his fence then—yes—jump over it as a means (or excuse) to gain entry to his home. That decision changes your life. Just as it changed Craig’s life. (Albeit illegal and trespassing in this case) Craig discovered the other side. In one moment, he changed his stars. He was on the edge, the precipice that would come to define the crux of his arc. And he took it. He didn’t have to, but he did. He jumped the fence.
Some cursory research on this led me down a rabbit hole that ended with Terror Management Theory (TMT). Kinda nuts, huh? Coined by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, TMT explores how human beings grapple with their own mortality. Not in a self-harm, suicidal sort of way, but of morbid curiosity, with perhaps even a healthy tease of the macabre. At some point in your life you may have experienced this. Walking along a cliff, willfully acknowledging just how easy it would be to step off and tumble to your death. Or maybe it was while you were taking the garbage to the curb last night on a busy street and realized how close those speeding cars were to you—how you could take just two steps to your left and...
I don’t mean to be morbid (or maybe I do?), but Becker claims that in these moments we are experiencing two things: 1) The Call of the Void, and 2) Mortality Salience. Mortality Salience, reminds us of well, our mortality—a chiefly human awareness—and triggers a sudden moment of clarity: That you could die quite easily in almost any situation. We could, but we don’t have to. The awareness elicits a sense of agency and power. That we have control over ourselves and our actions. That we don’t have to submit (not yet, at least) to the gaping, unshakeable maw of Death.
It’s interesting, no? Talking about death. It’s the one thing we all have in common. There are books about it. Movies that exploit it. Museums dedicated to it. It’s probably safe to say that we’re fascinated by it. Or maybe just terrified with the idea of confronting and accepting it. But we all want to know what happens when we die—what happens after death. Where we go. Our souls and all that. More compelling still is the thought of how close we can get to it. To death. How one tiny decision can turn our life upside-down. How, so easily, we can jump the fence.
The void is calling us all—it is inevitable. But talking about it doesn’t have to be so taboo.
All this took a different turn than I originally intended. Life is rich. Keep living, party people.
-Taylor
P.S. Whenever I contemplate death, I think of life—it’s impossible not to. Life is pretty sweet. I’m grateful for it.
*Some folks, like my parents, probably know their neighbors well.
TJH -- 05.26.2025