At the approach to every border, tension rises within us; emotions heighten. People are not made to live in borderline situations; they avoid them or try to flee from them as quickly as possible. And yet man encounters them everywhere, sees and feel them everywhere. Let us take the atlas of the world: it is all borders. Borders of oceans and continents. Deserts and forests.

And the borders of monarchies and republics? Kingdoms remote in time and lost civilizations? Pacts, treaties, and alliances?

(...)

How many victims, how much blood and suffering, are connected with this business of borders! There is no end to the cemeteries of those who have been killed the world over in the defense of borders. Equally boundless are the cemeteries of the audacious who attempted to expand their borders. It is safe to assume that half of those who have ever walked upon our planet and lost their lives in the field of glory gave up the ghost in battles begun over a question of borders.

Thank you, Ryszard Kapuscinski...