Open Doors

Have you ever felt like you have a million doors open in front of you, each with a different path that you could take, and if you choose the wrong one that you will never escape the repercussions? That is how I am feeling right now. It’s crazy, but a month ago, I thought I would never come to this place again. Call it the crossroads or call it whatever you will, but there are so many things that affect our lives that it puts a huge weight on our decisions. For some reason, the lyrics to should I stay or should I go now come to mind.

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble,

And If I stay there will be double.

I guess eventually you have to choose a door, or you’ll be left standing exactly where you are 10 years from now…but which door to take? It is such a big decision, deciding who we are going to be. The last thing we want is regret, and sometimes it seems whatever we do will create that regret. We get plagued by the what ifs and the why nots. It’s so difficult to even contemplate what the resounding effects of our decision might be. The worst part is wondering if after you walk through a door, will the path behind you be closed forever? It’s so hard to leave the normal, mundane, and known part of our lives and step out into the unknown, uncharted, and potentially dangerous parts. It’s so easy to just sit back and wait and ponder over what we should do, yet that in itself causes doors to close as well.

The truth is, this is another one of life’s irritating questions that have no answers. There is no right choice, no wrong choice. Whatever we do will give us a valuable life experience that we otherwise wouldn’t have had. The important thing is to act. To do something, whether it is actively deciding to wait or actually going through one of the doors.

There are some doors that will not stay open, and others that will, you just have to trust that you will make the best decision for you.  Who is to say that one day that door that you sacrificed might not open again? I know that everything isn’t as simple as choosing what kind of icecream you want, knowing you can always try the other flavors, but maybe we should view life like that. If I don’t like this, if this doesn’t work, I’ll try that instead.

We need to be more forgiving of ourselves when we feel like we’ve chosen wrong or that we could’ve chosen better. We are the authors of our lives, and the book we are writing will be full of things we might later wonder why we did. What matters is not what we did, but what we learned from it. This knowledge is what we can later use to help us decide which door to take, and that is what is important. There will always be open doors.