My mother always told me great snippets of wisdom. These types of phrases you blink at in confusion at first, trying to understand if you heard wrong or if she’s just talking weird, but later in life come back to bite you. Usually in a good way, and you can actually hear the coin drops in the back of your mind. “Chuh-ching!” Gotcha.
So, when my mother told me that every door that closes opens a window, I blinked. I stared for a moment, too, wondering if I want to ask her for clarification, or if I am too tired to handle the philosophical debate that follows. At the first time she told me that, when I was thirteen and the boy I wanted to go out with refused in front of the entire class, quietly loudly, I decided I would not pursue the issue.
What do doors have to do with backstabbing little adolescent boys, anyways.
Now, I think it’s ironic. I live by this little saying today. I refuse to succumb to what others see as fate; I make my own reality happen. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again, or pay someone to do it for you. Okay, maybe that’s not entirely what my mother meant.
But looking back, she was absolutely right. Every closed door really does expose a window. Back then I didn’t even realize it, even when the class ended up rallying behind me and I gained quite a number of friends. I didn’t realize this a few years later, either, when the fact I had to stop playing volleyball for medical reasons caused me to develop my computer skills and later get a job at it.
It took me even longer to notice that the frequently shut doors of my romantic interests opened a window that grew and expanded and tore the entire house down.
My mother was right, but I would add to her snippet of wisdom.
Sometimes the window is better than the door. You just have to see it.
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Written as a response to “Did I Miss Anything?“, a poem by Tom Wayman.
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