We might have already ceased to exist so many times. To live on the borderland is to stand on a seismic fault line, with existential anxiety running just beneath the surface. All it takes is xenophobic hatred gaining power, the publication of a controversial book, or envy over influence on human minds and hearts. Others. Eccentrics. Believers of a different faith. Those who come from elsewhere. Where does this audacity to exist come from? From love. Love alone enables the leap toward what seems impossible, makes room among people, and finds its fulfillment in service.
We lit a small light on the edge of the world. Guarding it, we unexpectedly found ourselves at a small centre of the world. Without renouning our otherness, we became akin. We built a waystation for those who cross borders and are curious about the opposite shore; for those cast out of the nest by adherents of racial, religious, or ethnic supremacy; for all those who feel suffocated by narrowly drawn territories of identity; for those who find tribal belonging too little to feel at home—in their own house, and under the boundless sky. We opened our doors to people of the borderland: to those who respect difference, who, instead of erasing borders, know how to study and cross them; who understand the art of building bridges; whose identities—rather than excluding others—are enriched by multicultural proximity.
We began with poor experience, an imperfect language, and fragile tools for action. We entered an almost untouched field—the practice of developing connective tissue between people and worlds. We made mistakes. We lost our way. At times we may have hurt others through ignorance, or speaking instead of listening. Yet we did not abandon the effort to move inward—beneath the surface of short-sightedness, makeshift thinking, and the tyranny of the immediate—persistently grounding cultural work in organic labor and the long durée .
The wisdom of the borderland is refined and subtle. It eludes the categories of media language and slips through the methodologies of social sciences. Wherever two people of the borderland meet, a song for three voices begins. And it is that third voice—neither yours nor mine, incapable of being possessed, free from the conspiracy of one’s own side and from our particular claims—that constitutes the true mystery of the borderland. In attending to this mystery, philosophy encounters practice; spiritual work meets the discipline of restraint, self-criticism, and the continual effort to transcend oneself.
Thirty-five years on the road. And still no end in sight to this journey to the East. New lessons remain to be learned; broken bridges need to be rebuilt. And there is that small, fragile light—still burning, still in need of care. Stay with us.
Krzysztof Czyżewski at the Borderland's 35th Anniversary
Jan. 14, 2026, 6 p.m.
Thirty-five years have passed since the Borderland Centre of Arts, Cultures and Nations came into being in Sejny. When I sat down to write these words, I lit a candle—and at once had to cup its flame with my hand, so that the first breath of air would not put it out. It struck me then that this simple gesture holds a truth about our existence.