I have a hard time opening doors.... just me?

"Ah sh*t, here we go again"

Nearly every Friday morning I visit my favorite coffee shop in Echo Park for a few hours. It’s become a ritual of mine to get some writing done.

During my time spent in the shop’s patio with my laptop and orange zest iced coffee, I am in the company of others who choose to spend their time at this overpriced, aesthetically pleasing oasis. Every so often, I witness a new guest struggle to open the heavy door that leads out here. A sign that no one heads is taped to the glass explaining that the door is difficult to budge. But we, grown adults, all of us, undoubtedly understand how to open a door… Right? Yet, it’s the same each time. A look of surprise when they find that their initial push wasn’t enough to open the glass door. Another shove. They back up slightly and look the door up and down. “what kind of witchcraft?” It is only now, after two tries, will they consider looking at the sign on the glass: “Door heavy. Push hard.” The message is quick and to the point. However, the most human thing to do, according to my observations, is to make the task as difficult as possible. Usually, the third attempt proves to be successful. They reach the other side and find a seat or the rest of their party. Life continues as if the entire play in three acts with the door never happened. No one in the patio cares usually. And neither do I, but nosiness is a trait that runs in the women in my family and I just can’t help but notice these very human interactions with life.

The first time I encountered this door, I behaved just like everyone else (although I did read the sign first, just saying). I assumed that everyone had handled this heavy door with grace and perfection. My cheeks burned with the certainty that everyone was staring at me which wasn’t at all true.

Nobody was watching me as I struggled, but the pressure I put on myself felt like an audience. The weight of a door that wasn’t easy to conquer on the first try felt like a minor, but personal defeat. The recovery period of acting normal and finding a seat afterward felt like a test that I was thrust into unprepared. Eventually, I sat down, and my nosiness taught me that I was the same as everyone else. Which, in turn, helped me internalize this mild awkwardness on a grander understanding of how life lessons cycle through us over and over again until we figure out how to graduate through them. All of our lessons, and strife, and cycles, and demons are uniquely personal to us. No two are the same. The door will look different to each of us. I will not understand its heaviness as you do and vice versa. And just how this perfect coffee shop would not be the same without its comically heavy door, the zest if life would go bland without the inevitable lessons that come with it… even if only to guide us to the next door.

The door, innocent to its own weighty nature, is not out to get us, and, for the most part, neither are the lessons. The experience of a lesson is often burdensome and uneasy to navigate. And though we may have help or intuitively know “the answers” in our heart, we are all innocent to the human behavior that is to simply make a mess of things as we develop new understandings and practices to guide us further in life.

Mirroring the guests in the coffee shop, we often perform the same motions over and over again, hoping for different outcomes. We look the situation up and down when the simplest answer may be right in front of us. Sometimes a step back is required to see the whole situation before the next move becomes clear. It’s hard internal work. It seems like everyone has been on the other side, enjoying the patio and the breeze and the coffee the whole time. But that’s not true. We’ve all had our own moments with the door and will likely have them again. Except for me because I find that it’s actually easier to use the front door and make the short journey around the gate to the patio. But in life, yes, I too, have my own big, heavy doors that I don’t often read the signs for on the first try.

This has been a year where, in one way or another, I feel like I’ve been faced with the same door over and over and over and over again. I’ve put old habits and thought patterns to rest once and for all only to then completely break down when I find them somehow back in my life once again. I’ve taken steps back, surprised when my best efforts weren’t enough to save or protect me when I was so sure they would be. I’ve examined situations up and down and discovered feelings of guilt for not moving with as much grace as I would have expected. “Why is this happening to me?” I’ve looked in all the wrong places for a way out when the simplest answers were right in front of me. It was only when I was able to shed my ego, assumptions, and desperation for the illusion of control that I was able to navigate through what was in front of me. Then, finally, in the clarity that is the patio, I look back and wonder how I ever found the door so difficult to understand in the first place. This exaggeration or astute observation- however you decide to perceive this essay is your business- has helped ease myself into the idea that perhaps we are best able to understand difficult or reoccurring situations as lessons once we release our ego.

I don’t have an answer for how to release one’s ego or how to open doors perfectly on the first try. I wish I did. Really. If I knew, I would scream it from the rooftops. However, what I do know for certain is that there’s no need to waste energy in casting self-judgment for discovering another or even the same door in your path once again. If doors lead to places then assume at the end of your journey you’ll find an oasis where you will rest, wiser and grateful for the path in which you came.

I wish you grace on your next door. I wish you the wisdom to read the sign the first time (trust that intuition, babe). And I wish you a blessing in your patio on the other side.

Until next time,

Or

Until we think again,

-RheAnn