“Doors and Windows”

There’s a saying out there: “When one door closes, another opens.” Some people say it like this: “When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.”

Things happen to us in our lives. Sometimes they’re events and circumstances we’ve brought on ourselves, sometimes it’s stuff we had nothing to do with and have no control over. Whether we believe in fate or destiny, or think that all of life is just one big, random clusterfuck, we can look and see both perspectives playing themselves against each other. They intertwine, like a tangled knot. It's the reason some people argue that the last part of the serenity prayer--the wisdom to tell the difference--is the most crucial.

I can look back over the course of my life and see the chain of events that moved me from one place to another. I can see, too, how my own choices, the decisions I’ve made in each moment, have affected the outcome and led to the places I found myself later on.

I’ve written here before about how I don’t like the idea that all of life is predetermined--that there’s no such thing as free will. If that were true, then there’s no responsibility. We aren’t responsible for our successes and we aren’t to blame for our failures. I don’t like it because I disagree with the whole ‘victim’ mentality of it. Yes, some righteously fucked up shit can happen, but we always have a choice in how we respond to it. We always have the choice of what our attitude is going to be as we go through life. And the choices we make are what shows our character. It is in the how we respond to what life deals us, how we play our hand, that truly speaks to the kind of people we are.

Most of us can look back over the course of our lives and see definite stages of it. Sometimes we can even draw lines or point to specific events, transition points that led from one phase to the next. A powerful enough event can change the entire course of our lives. For some, the moment we entered Recovery is one of those pivot points, just as much as the moment we first picked up. Early childhood trauma can be a point. So can any unexpected great success.

We can look at these transitions like walking through doorways. Sometimes after we’ve passed through a doorway, we find it has been locked behind us. When I was twenty years old, I went through a very intense, tumultuous six months. During that time, I had my second suicide attempt, was arrested on a false felony charge, and did time in a mental hospital. Going through those events changed my life in a profound and permanent way; there was no going back to who I was.

There are moments like these throughout our lives, but change is normal. Change is always happening. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. And no matter what the forces are at play, we retain the choice of how we handle ourselves as we go through them. We can give in to fear and doubt. We can become panicked and distraught. We can be egotistical and angry. We can be calm, centered, and accepting.

Change can be scary, but in the end all it is, really, is just a door--and you go through it.