The Closed Door

This week I’ve been thinking about this quote from French philosopher Simone Weil: “This world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through. Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication…Every separation is a link.”

There are barriers within the human body. There’s a septum between left and right nostril; the dominant nostril alternates every 90 minutes throughout the day. The corpus callosum, a broad band of nerve fibers, both separates and connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. And there is a divide between the left and right sides of the diaphragm, which plays a major role in breathing.

Humans were made to alternate between the two sides, to shift from left to right, just as we do from right leg to left and back in order to walk or run. This alternation also needs to happen at the level of our diaphragm, sinuses, and brain. The ease we feel within our body and nervous system depends on our ability to transition across these barriers.