DOORWAYS

There were four of us in the office when it happened. We worked for a glass company and if you haven’t guessed by now, the front of the building was large plates of…you guessed it…glass.

The glass door from the lobby to the office had a sensor, in that, you had to touch a particular spot on the handle in order for it to actually open. An outsider was visiting and clearly had not read the tiny sign in the corner reading the instructions for proper door etiquette. And that’s when it happened. That woman was in a hurry, didn’t hold the sensor, and face-planted so hard into the door, it left an oily, makeup, and peach-fuzz face print on the glass. I don’t know if she was more embarrassed by the smash or the four of us hysterically laughing. (Side note: Only her pride was hurt.) Yes, years later; it’s still funny.

Doorways in general are such a simple concept, aren’t they? They keep out the cold or hot. They stop wind and intruders. Doorways can be used as an exit or even an entrance. What a mind-blowing invention.

But, as you may have figured out by now, I’m not about to comment on the physical structure, but rather a metaphysical meaning of an ordinary doorway.

Let’s take a moment to consider the old proverb, or maybe it’s a parable. It could be a fable, or some sort of allegorical metaphor… “When the door closes, God opens a window”. Maybe it’s an old wives’ tale. You know what? To stay on the safe side, let’s just call it a cliché.

Can we take a moment to think about the phrase mentioned above? An average door size is three feet wide by a little over six and a half feet tall. Now, let’s compare it to an average sized window which measures basically two feet wide by three feet tall. We can surmise then, that the door that closed (in our example) had a greater mathematical allowance to move baggage back and forth through the opening. And if the window opened after a failure to pass between the door jams, then we can infer that the smaller opening, the window, allows less baggage to pass through the sill.

Still with me?

Maybe this parable/fable/cliché represents a bigger picture in the scheme of things, in that, we are always offered alternate opportunities or options—we aren’t stuck in this life. Maybe in order to move out of, or even change our environment, we need to leave unused baggage and travel lighter into a new space to call home. Maybe we need to leave something we thought was valuable behind, only to realize when we change our route, we understand that the old is meant to stay where we left it—in the past. We will find new baggage in our new environment, and in our cyclical society, we will do it all over again. In this, we adapt, change, and evolve through passage ways materialized from a place beyond our comprehension.  

Of course, if all that was a wicked long thought for you, just keep in mind that doors can always be the butt, or face, of a good joke.