The Doors We Slam
My friend Anna and I were having lunch. She ordered a Thai salad that came with peanuts, and asked the waiter to eliminate the nuts because she was horribly allergic.
“I didn’t know you were allergic to peanuts,†I said.
“I’m not,†she said, adding, “but I don’t like them and I should be able to get what I want. If I tell them I don’t like them, they won’t remove them.â€
We got the orders to go and moved to the outside patio. It was one of the first perfect spring days—sunny and mild. I moved toward a table and Anna said, “Not there. It’s too close to the street, and the dogs that walk by get their bacteria-filled noses too close to my food.†That left a place in the sun and a place in the shade. Anna refused to sit in the sun because UV rays cause skin damage and disliked the shade because it was under a tree filled with chattering birds—and she wasn’t risking “ bird poop on my lunch.â€
We moved back inside, and Anna found a table that met her needs—not too close to the window’s glare, not too close to the kitchen’s noise, and absolutely not too close to the ladies’ room door. I felt relieved we found a table that worked for her.
Setting limits on your life doesn’t expand your universe
As the conversation crossed over from the expected cicada explosion to Anna’s yoga class, I discovered that Anna had asked to work from home if the cicada numbers were more than she could stand, because she hated flying bugs, and that the yoga teacher had offended her because he had demonstrated a meditation technique that was not the same as her meditation teacher used. She had quit the yoga class.
“How will the one meditation interfere with the other?†I wanted to know.
“I chose my meditation technique very carefully,†Anna said. “I don’t want something else interfering with it. I’d have to ask my meditation instructor if it was OK to try something else. I don’t want to risk damaging what I’ve learned.â€
“But you enjoyed the yoga so much. Why quit the whole class over a demonstration?â€
Anna shrugged. “I thought it was offensive that he would barge into our yoga structure with a meditation technique. My first husband was like that—always buying g new stuff and bringing it home without asking. I’m not going through that again.â€
Limiting our lives takes work
Since that lunch, I’ve given a lot of thought to how we manage the space in our lives. We start out as babies, the whole world open before us. As new experiences come to us, we learn, make decisions, learn consequences.
Then we begin to close doors to experience. We have a bad experience, generalize the consequence. We won’t try that again. Slam! That room is closed off. Our friends make fun of us because we like country music. Slam! goes the door on people who don’t like country music. We meet a man who is a vegetarian. Uh-oh, the last boyfriend who was a vegetarian was a lousy cook. Slam! No more vegetarian boyfriends. And while we are at it—Slam! No more lousy cooks in our lives.
It doesn’t take long for us to limit ourselves. If we slam enough doors, our lives get small with limited choices. The choices we have left don’t seem interesting anymore. We feel emotionally claustrophobic. But we resist change or new things. After all, we reason, ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.’ Vulnerability could lead to pain, and we know we don’t like that.
What we resist, persists
Slamming the door doesn’t solve the problem, improve our chances, or give us perspective—it simply puts up another barrier to what is possible in our lives. The barriers become our horizons, and we begin to take on the chore of living in that limited world. Pretty soon we feel put upon, martyred, with no way out. And worst of all, we don’t see it as a world of our own creation, so we feel trapped and angry at someone else—the boyfriend who couldn’t cook, the friend who hates country music.
Tomorrow: some exercises that lead to solutions. Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. You can see her notecards, journals and handmade paper bowls here.
