On a sunny Palm Sunday afternoon, at the border between the United States and Mexico, world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma sat down with his cello, out in the open, and played excerpts from Bach’s cello suites. He began the performance in Laredo, Texas, then moved across the border and played for the folks of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

An international bridge over the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo connects the two countries. Constructed in the 1880’s, the bridge has been destroyed by floods over and over. Every time it’s wrecked, Mexico and the U.S. rebuild it.

With the bridge as a background to his performance, Yo-Yo Ma commented on the way cultural activities “build bridges, not walls” (Common Dreams on line magazine, 4/14/19). Art, music, dance, writing, fashion and film have always travelled across people and places. The concept of borders is no match for artistry.

Christopher Kimball, he of the bowties worn with his apron as he tests recipes in his kitchen, has travelled all over the world, tasting food from many regions. He has decided, of late, that the idea of ethnic food is bogus. Food is food.

People all over the world mix and match ingredients to blend certain tastes and textures into their meals. Whoever has an apple, or a chicken, or a bag of cornmeal, figures out how to use it to create something delicious. Once you have tasted a dish in a certain country, if you love it you will try to recreate it in your own kitchen. In that way, recipes end up diffusing through regions and countries, across mountains and oceans. They are borderless.

“We all sit at the same table,” he says (Milk Street Magazine, Special Issue, April, 2019). Issues of cultural appropriation aside, now that most ingredients can be readily found in our own neighborhoods, the search for exotic tastes is within reach. The creation of recipes, the plating of beautiful food, the desire to share taste experiences are processes we share the world over.

As I write this, news is spreading of the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. News like that travels around the globe quickly, and not solely due to technology. It is we who spread the word, we who dissolve the borders of nation and language to share the feelings.

The emotionality of the moment captures us. We share our disbelief, our sorrow, our horror and our pain through our memories of being there ourselves, through our personal photos, through the tweets of people on the ground at the fire, through a thousand ways we humans work to be connected when something unthinkable happens.

Our feelings often compel us to dissolve the idea of borders and become fellow human beings. Candlelight vigils to mourn the deaths of people in one place become candlelight vigils in cities around the world, as a way to express solidarity with the mourners. Violence against one church or mosque or temple brings deep sorrow to every congregation all over the world.

Wherever mankind has created a border or a barrier between people, human beings will find ways to penetrate that wall. In the end, we belong to one nation, indivisible. We belong to one another.