Checking doors

“If it doesn’t open it’s not your door”

For the last year or two I have been looking for a door to open. I have some baggage I am carrying around that has kept a number of the doors I approach not just closed by locked. That’s okay, it doesn’t make me bitter and I understand but I feel that there is something out there, some need or cause that needs my attention.

I do some consulting work which runs hot and cold, busy and slow. I am not getting rich at a time it would probably behoove me to make a little money and sock it away for those rainy days I will be facing in my seventies, just fourteen short years away. But I have always adhered to the simple philosophy that things will work out. I don’t know why, I don’t know when, maybe not in the way or direction you expected but things do work out with the added bonus that shit happens for a reason.

I sold my business thinking I would find something new and different that I would love doing as much as my former occupation before I got burned out, but I haven’t. I also didn’t expect the “Great Recession” to have such a negative effect on my investments. Certainly, not a boat I am rowing by myself.

If I kicked the bucket, bit the dust, bought the farm at this very moment I think my family could look back over my life and say I didn’t just take up space. I have had more ups than downs, more good than bad over my 56 years but still I feel there is something else out there calling me, I just don’t know what that something is or where that open door might be.

Seeing my family over the holiday is always a grounding experience for me. We are all getting older, Mom and Dad, sisters and our kids. We spent the weekend meeting new boyfriends and girlfriends, planning weddings, futures, watching my nieces and nephew find their young way in the world. It reminds me what a blip we are on the universe of time, a simple, quick blink of the eye. We all strut around with big plans, believing we are indispensable, thinking, as Steve Jobs described “We’re here to put a dent in the universe” but the reality is, for most of us, the only significant dent we will make is to our car door.

But that’s okay, honestly it is more than okay, too many of us consider ourselves failures if we don’t cure cancer or solve the problem of world hunger. We beat ourselves up because we aren’t married, or we don’t have children, or do important work that gets our name in the newspaper. In truth, if you treat others with compassion and grace. If you share what you have with others be it your time, money or other resources you have made a dent, a pretty significant dent. Sure it might just look like a scratch to you but ask the other person, their response might surprise you.

As I finish this post a thunderstorm is rolling in. Ten minutes ago it was sunny and hot, now it is dark, windy and much chiller. Things change that quickly, opportunities present themselves without warning, doors open and doors close but if it doesn’t open it’s not your door, go jiggle the next door knob.

“My favorite words are possibilities, opportunities and curiosity. I think if you are curious, you create opportunities, and then if you open the doors, you create possibilities.” –  Mario Testino