131. Give Your Heart Wings
The “Neighbor Song” carries an important message:
“Hello my neighbor, hello my friend.
Kind greetings to you I send.
Children of different lands are we;
learning by love and understanding.
The heart knows no borders
when you give your heart wings.”
Every Talking Hands Talking Feet song has a story. “Hello My Neighbor” is about a friendship between a young man from El Salvador and his boss ‘El Gringo Loco’.
Through a series of extraordinary events the lives of a bright, charismatic Latino and our little family came to be entwined. Through his story we became intimately involved with the greater immigration story and the reasons behind the tide of humanity moving northward from Central America and Mexico to cross the Rio Grande.
Our vocabulary now included “coyotes” (guides), “pandillas” (gangs, like the notorious El Salvadoran “Mara Salvatrucha” or MS13), “ICE” (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), “Los Indocumentados” (the Undocumented), names of various detention centers around the country with their lucrative prison phone service called “Tel-Mate”, and the procedures and terms of petitioning for “asilo politico” (political asylum).
The official number of “illegals” in the U.S. is eleven million. The actual number easily exceeds twenty million. The reality is different than the popular media would tell us; and the issue of immigration and border control has exposed bigotry, intolerance and ignorance in the name of patriotism and the almighty dollar.
Our journey as a family has always been one of service through education. We steer clear of the volatile battlefields of politics, religious hypocrisy and ethnic prejudice. We strongly believe a ‘throughout human’ education to be the key to the cure. (That’s why we call it Talking Hands Talking Feet – Songs to Educate.)
The song “Hello My Neighbor” carries a simple yet profound message. It says, no matter what land we come from, we are of kind by virtue of our shared humanity. It says, we can rise above our blood passions and prejudices through education. Education (not cultural indoctrination) gives our heart “wings”, the wings of an enlightened, empathic mind. “Borders” of gender inequity, ethnic intolerance, economic feudalism and nationalism belong to a barbaric past.
This song is one of hope, humanity and kindness kindled by love and understanding.
“The heart knows no borders when you give your heart wings.”
You can listen to the Neighbor Song here.
~PAZ