When a door closes in your face or behind your back, what do
you do?
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests: “Be an opener of doors.”
Are you willing to do that or just leave them closed and look for a window? Better
yet, do you wait for one to open?
Searching for an answer to these questions, I turned to a
few writers, thought leaders and philosophers for guidance or at least their
opinions.
Mehmet Murat Ildan, Turkish playwright and novelist says, “Life
is a house with millions of doors. Here is a good strategy of life: Open the
doors, open as much as you can, open as much as possible, open the doors!”
Well, that is all well and good if confronted with doors
that are closed that you want to get through but what about the ones you hoped
would not close?
Attributed to both Alexander Graham Bell and Hellen Keller,
I found this quote quite true about closed doors: “When one door closes,
another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the
closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
Over my 40+ years, so many doors have been closed to me, in
my face or behind me. I have kicked against some, begging and pleading with the
occupant to let me back in. When that did not work, I found every excuse why it
was a shitty room in the first place and I was glad to be out of it.
Many a times, I was most uncomfortable in those rooms but it
was comfortable. I remember when my partner of 16 years was walking out; a
large part of the explanation was our relationship had become a comfort, a
habit that needed to be broken. I was shattered to say the least when that door
was not only closed to me but barred with steel, never to re-open.
Yet, it was my greatest and best lesson. It was also my
first true opportunity to be freely Me.
Remez Sasson puts it this way:
“If we could only
move our sight and attention away from the closed door, we might be surprised
to discover new, open doors. It might not be so easy to move our eyes
elsewhere, due to attachment to the old and familiar, and fear of the new and
the unknown.”
Since that
experience almost eight years ago, closing doors no longer scare me. In fact, I
welcome them. Do I hurt at times? Of
course I do. The closing door to my less than a month old granddaughter has
been one of the hardest doors for me. However, when I consider the price that I have
paid for my freedom for 40+ years now, I stand back and pray that it might stay
even slightly ajar but if it does not, then there is nothing I can do.
Then there is the
magic of the Universe. As I take a stand for my freedom and my voice, my Kitten
is being kept from me. The Universe, however, always colluded to bring to you
what you need. First, It brought me an emergency/temporary place to stay as I,
for a peaceful life, bowed to my daughter’s boyfriend’s demand to leave their
apartment (or serfdom might be a better word). Next, It brought the most
unexpected, delightful and delicious expression of Love.
One of my DOS Sistah
offered me a place in her home. I arrived there Saturday afternoon to be
greeted by her six year old daughter who I have not seen since she was two. Baby
girl rushed to me like a long lost friend, threw herself on me and wrapped her
arms around me and declared “I like you so much!”
I have no idea how
the floodgate did not open! This morning, three days after my arrival, baby
girl heard my voice in the kitchen and she charged in and again enveloped me in
her loving arms (well my legs) this time declaring, “I love you!”
Struggling to keep
it together, missing my granddaughter
but ever so grateful for this little angel reminding me that there is good in
me even as I stand my ground that I am a free woman.
A major door is
closing and my heart is bleeding but a window is being flung open by a six year
old. Life does not get better than that!
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Namaste.
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