What's Behind Door Number Three?

There’s an old quote I’ve hung onto for the past couple of years that says, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” (Alexander Graham Bell)

I feel like this week has made me take a long, hard look at myself and how much energy I continue to waste staring at the old knobs of the doors which have closed.  Or worse, how much time and effort I’ve spent pulling on a locked handle;  pushing, wailing, screaming, wishing my brute force could create the desired effect.  This morning I woke up thinking how ridiculous it seems, watching myself from the outside in. 

A few months ago I challenged myself to do one thing each day that propels me forward.  Something intentional, deliberate before I allow myself to fall asleep at night.  Make the time and twist it around to form itself to my will, a way to move toward a desired outcome.  I’ve spent years studying others beliefs and ideas that life is an illusion, that we create our own environments, our own worlds.  Now is the time to begin putting it into practice, into motion and into action.  And it’s a bit uncomfortable.  Mainly because I’ve taught myself over and over that what’s real is what’s behind the closed doors.  The shift of expecting something more miraculous and more fulfilling coming my way, or of discovering something more powerful and more beautiful than what has been is a bit hard for me to embrace.  Yet life has brought me to the point of realizing that maybe it’s time to leave fear behind and begin opening the doors I’ve been ignoring or too afraid to explore.

I haven’t yet conquered losses.  Maybe we’re not supposed to.  I haven’t figured out how to keep from crying when I see certain things, certain places, certain people.  Haven’t yet mastered my own heart.  But what dawned on me (kind of like a lightning bolt) this morning is that I can either dwell and keep putting energy into rooms that don’t serve my life, waste time and thought and tears… or I can repackage that amount of “umph” and I can project it onward, upward and outward and spend the time improving life.

How much potential can we unlock if we learn to stop allowing a draining of our “natural resources”… our personal energies?  If I can effectively recognize when those times happen, when I start remaining stuck or frozen, or get pulled backwards, then pull myself around and anticipate the hidden power of what’s behind another door, I uncap endless possibilities, an endless amount of unexplored options and life becomes my ocean rather than my chains.  And suddenly I'm a pirate sailing through an exciting, ever changing sea rather than a turtle stuck inside its own shell, too afraid to come out.  Ahoy!