The Open Door
(In loving memory of Lord Porchester of Orange)
I know I’m a hypocrite. And yet, as I hold the door open for this blasted cat, I shake my head in frustration.
This ball of fur and brute instinct knows what I know, which is that the most advantageous position is not having to commit.
The minute you step outside, there you are, stuck with the realities of your choice, unable to rest on the warm couch inside, but instead assailed by the cold breeze and eyed by rivals in the inky darkness.
Yet if you remain inside, all chance of adventure is lost, and you must make do with the options available to you in the stolid confines of the house. Nothing wrong with them, but what if something outside is more engaging, more thrilling?
My life has contained an abundance of these choices. Out or in, with or without, the risk/reward calculations buzzing ceaselessly as I stand at the doorway, unwilling to choose, lest my avenue of retreat disappear.
When I have chosen to walk through the door, the results have been mixed. Adventure, yes, novelty, yes, but no greater measure of security or long-term fulfillment. Merely another journey to another door, at which I stand, twitching my tail, wondering if this one is different.
So many doors. So little time left.
I feel it when I am invited to partake in musical collaborations. Walk through that door, and a wide vista of rehearsals, gigs, and internecine strife awaits. But also the possibility of triumph, of transcendence, of unexpected opportunity. When I turn opportunities down, the road not taken itches at the back of my mind, wondering…was that the right turn?
Yet I am on the path I’m on because of lessons learned. Perils avoided thanks to experience, warning signs detected, patterns recognized. But perhaps also because of inertia. Making a change is so damned difficult. Thrusters weary of changing course, gravity pulling so strongly, and changing for what exactly? Impossible to know. The cruelest reality.
Still, the door beckons. Something else lies there. Who knows what? Maybe disaster. Maybe the path to your dreams. Maybe a figment of your imagination, a false choice in a world where our options are circumscribed by Mammon and his agents. By doors already walked through, closed in our wake. The way is shut. It was made by the dreams that are dead, and the dead keep it.
We celebrate those who walked through the doors and found treasure there. Less so the ones who found ruin. Yet neither knew what lay behind those portals. The hand of luck made the call, with aid from wiles and circumstance, themselves the results of doors already cleared, in just as much ignorance.
Worse, with each door, the consequences mount. A wrong turn taken at 20 is not the same as one taken at 40. Paths back to safety dwindle. The judgments of others hang heavier, cutting off even more paths. Base survival pulls at our feet, a grounding wire, lest the lightning sizzle us to a crisp in the open storm.
What is the resolution? How do we step through the door, and not carry lifelong regrets, should the choice be wrong? How do we know the lives left behind us are worse than the ones we have chosen? We do not. And so, at each open door, we pause, sniffing the air, scanning what can be seen from the threshold.
Where are we going? Does our goal lay this way? Or instead, have we already stepped through one door too many, irretrievably lost in a maze of choices we will never see clearly from above?
All the while, we drag others along with us. Friends, family, all watching us stare through the portico, making quiet bets on what lies beyond, and on our ability to perceive it. Most believe they know, and some are right, having traversed similar paths. Yet it is never certain, as the journey of one does not necessarily mirror that of others.
Thus do I find myself lingering at this door, waiting for the cat to make up his mind. I do not feel that I should rush him, for I myself have been here before, and chafed at the expectations of others for quick consideration, an end to their suspense. Give me time, I ask the universe. In time, I will know for certain, and I will act.
So says the optimist. Perhaps we never do truly know, no matter how much time elapses with our noses stuck through the frame, waiting for a sign. Maybe we are always blind, our impressions of wisdom futile, our experience so totally unique that none can truly help us decide.
Maybe the open door is all there is. Maybe we walk through it every day, its gaping maw undetectable, equal measures of horror and exultation lying in wait. Maybe we only think there is a choice.
Maybe I hesitate at this juncture because I see more than some, and I know that another world exists. Or maybe that world is a fiction, borne from a mind unsettled by the reality it finds in the world as it stands. Maybe the door is never open at all. Maybe we’re stuck here.
Maybe that realization is the key to acceptance. Or maybe acceptance is how the door gets closed in the first place.
Take your time, cat. I don’t know what I’m doing, either.