The Lessons I Learned about Borders

A few months ago, I came across an image comparing two quotes about patriotism.

Cicero: "For our country, we ought to be ready to give even our lives."

Tolstoy: "Patriotism is a superstition that has been used to make people willing to kill strangers."

The juxtaposition struck me. One voice celebrates the love of country as noble sacrifice. The other names it as a tool of manipulation. Both can't be entirely right. But sitting with the tension, I found myself drawn more to Tolstoy's skepticism.

Not because I hate my country. But because I've crossed borders. And what I found on the other side didn't match what I'd been taught to fear.

The Grand Bazaar

Over a decade ago, I traveled to Europe as part of a university program. The itinerary took us through several countries, but two cities stand out in memory: Budapest and Istanbul.

Budapest is one of the finest cities I've ever visited. The architecture, the history, the Danube cutting through the heart of it all. I could spend paragraphs describing it. But it's Istanbul that taught me something I didn't expect to learn.

I remember walking through the Grand Bazaar, surrounded by vendors calling out to locals and tourists, offering everything from spices to leather goods to ornate lamps. The prices weren't fixed. You were expected to haggle.

This was completely foreign to me. I grew up with sticker prices. You look at the tag, you pay the amount, you leave. The idea of negotiating felt uncomfortable at first, almost confrontational.

But it wasn't threatening. It was just different. The vendors wanted to sell things. I wanted to buy things. We found a middle ground. Tea was offered. Conversations happened. Money changed hands.

People are people no matter where you are in the world.

That sounds obvious written out. But it's easy to forget when you've spent your life hearing about the dangers of "other" places and people.

The Fears I Inherited

Some of my family have expressed concerns about Muslim immigration to Europe. Sharia law taking over. The erosion of Western values. The usual talking points that circulate in certain media ecosystems.

I understand where these fears come from. When you've never been somewhere, it's easy to imagine it as the news portrays it. Dangerous. Foreign. Threatening.

But I was in Istanbul. A Muslim-majority country. I heard the call to prayer echo through the streets multiple times a day. I saw women in hijabs and men heading to mosques. I experienced customs and rhythms completely different from what I knew.

It was pleasant. It was interesting. It was human.

The vendors at the Grand Bazaar weren't trying to convert me or impose their beliefs. They were trying to make a living. Same as vendors anywhere. Same as people anywhere.

There's a pattern I keep noticing: abstract fears about "those people" rarely survive actual contact with those people. It's easy to project danger onto a distant, faceless group. It's much harder to maintain that fear when someone is handing you tea and asking about your family.

Crossing Lines

The EU border model fascinated me.

Crossing from one country to another in Europe was remarkably simple. A passport stamp. Sometimes not even that. No body scanners. No lengthy interrogations. No having to submit requests weeks in advance and wait for approval.

Just... movement. Minimally intrusive. Almost unremarkable.

This stood in stark contrast to the bureaucratic maze I'd grown accustomed to. The security theater of the post-september-eleventh security craze. The assumption of guilt until proven innocent. The sense that crossing a border is an inherently suspicious act requiring layers of verification.

I'm not naive. I understand that borders serve functions. Public health. Security. There are legitimate reasons to know who's entering a country. Vetting for serious criminal history or communicable diseases makes sense.

But does it require the current level of red tape? The dehumanizing processes? The treatment of travelers as potential threats until proven otherwise?

The person scanning your passport in one country is doing essentially the same job in every other country. The family at the airport cafe has the same worries about making their connection in Tokyo as they do in Toronto. The child crying on the plane doesn't know what country it's flying over.

Yet we treat geography of birth as destiny.

The Language We Use

Pay attention to how we talk about people who cross borders outside approved channels.

"Illegal." "Alien." "Illegitimate."

These words do something subtle but powerful. They take a legal status, a bureaucratic classification, and make it sound like an inherent characteristic. As if the person themselves is illegal, rather than their paperwork.

Language shapes perception. When we call someone an "illegal alien," we're not just describing their immigration status. We're making it easier to see them as less than human. As other. As threat rather than person.

I think about the families I saw at various airports during my travels. Parents trying to keep kids entertained. Couples holding hands. Elderly passengers needing assistance. Regular people doing regular things. People with different skin colors with the same fundamental needs.

What makes one of them legitimate and another illegitimate? A stamp in a booklet? A form filed correctly? The random chance of where they happened to be born?

The Tribe in Our Heads

I get it, though. I understand why we do this.

For most of human history, knowing who was in your tribe and who wasn't was a survival skill. Resources were scarce. Strangers could mean danger. The instinct to categorize people as "us" or "them" kept our ancestors alive long enough to become our ancestors.

Tribalism isn't a moral failing. It's an evolutionary inheritance.

The problem is that we're still running software designed for small bands of hunter-gatherers in a world of eight billion people and global supply chains. The instinct that once helped us survive now gets exploited by politicians, media figures, and algorithms that profit from keeping us afraid of each other.

We live in an age of abundance that our ancestors couldn't have imagined. I can eat fruit grown on another continent for breakfast. I can video chat with someone on the other side of the planet. The scarcity that made tribalism adaptive is largely gone for those of us lucky enough to live in developed nations.

So I have to wonder: can we outgrow it?

Not eliminate it entirely. I'm not naive enough to think we can rewire millions of years of evolution. But can we recognize the tribal instinct for what it is, an outdated heuristic, and choose not to let it dictate our treatment of strangers?

The vendor in Istanbul wasn't competing with me for scarce resources. He was participating in the same global economy I participate in. His success didn't threaten mine. If anything, our exchange benefited us both.

The biology is real. The fear response is real. But the story we tell ourselves about who deserves to be feared? That part is a choice.

The Arbitrariness of It All

Here's what travel taught me that staying home never could:

Borders are arbitrary.

They're lines drawn on maps, often by colonial powers, often cutting through communities that had existed for centuries. They shift with wars and treaties. They're maintained by bureaucracies that could just as easily be configured differently.

This doesn't mean borders are meaningless or that we should have none. It means we should hold them lightly. We should recognize them for what they are: human constructions, not natural laws. Not lines where one's rights begin and end.

The person on the other side of that line isn't fundamentally different from you. They have the same basic needs. The same hopes for their children. The same desire for safety and dignity and meaning.

Patriotism, at its best, might mean wanting good things for your neighbors. But when it becomes a superstition, as Tolstoy warned, it can make you see those neighbors as enemies simply because an arbitrary line separates you.

What I Brought Home

I came back from that trip with tea from the Grand Bazaar and memories of Budapest's thermal baths. But I also came back with something less tangible.

A suspicion of fear-mongering. A skepticism of narratives that paint entire regions or religions as threats. An understanding that the comfortable distance between "us" and "them" is maintained more by ignorance than by actual difference.

When I hear concerns about immigration now, I think about the vendor who patiently explained the quality differences between Turkish rugs. When I hear fears about Muslims, I think about the call to prayer that became a pleasant backdrop to my afternoon walks.

It's harder to fear what you've experienced.

That's not to say travel solves everything. You can visit places and return with your prejudices intact. You can insulate yourself from genuine encounter even while physically present.

There are radicals in every country. Muslim Jihadists. Christian Nationalists. People on the fringes who hopefully don't gain the power needed to legislate their religion onto everyone else.

But if you're open to it, crossing borders can dissolve the borders in your mind. The ones that tell you people on the other side are fundamentally different. The ones that make Tolstoy's critique feel more like description than exaggeration.

The Real Lesson

The lessons I learned about borders aren't really about borders.

They're about the gap between abstract fear and concrete reality. They're about how easily we dehumanize people we've never met. They're about the arbitrary lines we draw, both on maps and in our minds, and how fiercely we defend them.

Cicero thought dying for your country was noble. Maybe in some contexts it is. But I've seen what's on the other side of those borders we're supposedly defending against.

Mostly, it's just people. Trying to live. Trying to sell things. Trying to raise families. Trying to get by.

The superstition Tolstoy warned about isn't love of home. It's the belief that home is threatened by the mere existence of people who live somewhere else.

I'm grateful I got to cross those borders. Not just the ones on the map. The ones in my head.