Closed Doors

I still see doors in my mind that have been closed for a while.  Two immediately come to mind.  The first is the door from the cafeteria at Highland High School, a door that I went through into a hall that led to my English classroom, where I taught for five years.  It was a refuge for me, surrounded with great books and materials, a place where I did my best to teach some great kids how to write and prepare for the future.  That classroom -- in fact, that whole hallway -- is gone forever.  Highland remodeled a few years ago, and replaced that wing with something much better.  But when I enter the cafeteria, I can still imagine that door in my mind, and with my back to the location, I think that I can just turn around and enter that room again.  But it's gone forever.

The country church where I have been the past thirteen years, and where I have spent a total of seventeen years of my life so far, furnished a place of refuge for me:  a tiny office where I could go to be alone.  It was in the Mesquite Wing, an attachment that was added to the building some sixty-odd years ago.  The wing had been a church until it combined with ours at that time.  Before that, it had been a school; I'm not sure how long, but I know the school consolidated with Highland in the late 1930's.  Now, the wing is gone.  I'm excited about the new building that is taking its place, but I still have urges to go through the door.  There is now a piece of paneling covering the previous door, but in the corner of my eye, it still looks like the door is there, and I still have an urge to go through it and re-enter a world that no longer exists.  The Mesquite Wing is no more.

As I grow older, I find that I am becoming the person I used to make fun of, the person who constantly longs for the "good old days," who wishes that things had not changed so much.  So many of my favorite products and name brands have been discontinued or so modified that they no longer resemble the product that I enjoyed.

And then, there are all the things I was accustomed to in our culture.  I loved the TV, the movies, and much of the music of the 80's, and tend to measure anything current by that era of my life, and in my own cultural base, most things come up short.  My wife probably tires of hearing me talk about how the things of today just don't come near the things in the "good old days."  In fact, I'm sure she's tired of it, because I get tired of myself saying these things as well.

This past month, I've been grateful for what I've seen in my experience with the "Two Doors."  Behind those doors are some of the best things that ever happened to me, and I would never try to forget them or put them out of my past, but it is futile trying to enter them again, to go back to the way things were.  When I come to grips with the fact that some doors are closed forever, and I can never open them again, I realize I need to get on with my life, to go to the doors that are still open, and experience what's there.

The same is true with the rest of life.  It's time to stop whining and complaining about changes that I cannot control, to look around and see what's important now.  Highland School has a beautiful new building, and it's filled with capable and dedicated teachers, and I enjoy going back and contributing by substituting there.  Our church is about to have a new auditorium to replace the 97-year-old one, and we will have ample parking and, if all works well, some day a new educational building to augment what we have now.

It's time for me to look around and see what new products are here for me now.  I'm sure I can find something good to replace my flip phone when it finally dies, to find an after shave that can replace the old formula Old Spice, and maybe even a convenience store snack that will be as satisfying as Tom's Peanuts.  I might be able to find music, movies, and cultural items that I enjoy as much as those I enjoyed in the 1980's.  If not, maybe I need to see about making some light instead of cursing the darkness.

I can't open the old doors that I loved so much, but there are a lot of options out there:  doors to be entered, some already opened, some just waiting to be opened.  Some are no good at all, but others are filled with great potential.  It's up to me whether I will go looking for them, or stay at home talking about how good everything used to be.