Letter From Paris: Opening Doors

My theme today is opening doors,  which can be a loaded subject.  A subject people are afraid of--or don't want to talk about in any real way.  Opening doors means leaving our comfort zones.

What doors were opened to each of us?  Did we take them?  Did we recognize opportunities that appeared out of the blue?

Or did we lose confidence and hide?

Could we have known that what broke our hearts could also have cleared our paths to actions we wouldn't have dared before?  A critical ending--some kind of death--really did have to scar us before we could let the old go and imagine a new existence.  It is Nature's way of clearing our psychic trash.  Burn, baby, burn so you can live again!  Peel away another layer of spiritual skin. 

Why didn't we understand how important it was to learn and grow into ourselves, our talents, and our desires? 

Civilizing rules and societal values often beat us down to the nub of being like everyone else, taking our ever-so-particular identity away--or trying to.  Pounded into us:  Fall in line.  Fall in line.  Don't do it your way.  Do it mine.  Do it like this.  You are wrong, and that is crazy. 

Artists, especially, hear this a lot.  But anyone who dares to be different gets it for just being themselves.

To Balzac's house.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

We are repeatedly told that we should listen to our heads--and not to our hearts or guts--that our natural instincts that have been honed over thousands of evolutionary years (and are the most in-touch real part of us) are wrong.  Irrational.  Dumb.  Too Emotional.  Stupid.

We should be--get this--ever and always rational, because that's how success is defined and reached.  Rationality.  For Americans, is success defined in any other way than with money?  Are we changing that with spirit with a capital "S"?  (Not that I don't want a big pile of money myself.  Mark this down: I do.  But what values are we really teaching our children about how to live a life that counts, a life that fulfills them as w/hole people?  Why don't we look at living our lives with joy, passion, and as more rounded and "individual" human beings, each with our own path?)

To Yves Saint-Laurent's.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

What happened when we were lost and afraid, when we didn't know which way to turn?  When the answer of what we "needed" to do rocked through us as confusing static if not sheer panic?  When the thing we "should" have done didn't really feel right, but what felt like maybe-just-maybe we really wanted to do for ourselves was "impractical" or we couldn't even let that knowing bubble up from within ourselves? 

Were we too afraid?

Blue Door with Cloud Windows.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

I like to think of myself as a brave person, but there were doors that came ajar that I missed stepping through.  Times when I began to see the light around the opaque slab as it inched open, fretted over what to do, and listened to my head instead of my heart, that inner voice that knows me better than I/ego know myself.  These are the moments when my openings slammed shut, and I was left alone.

We have street after street of beautiful doors in Paris.  Doors that open into secret worlds or gardens.  Lives that are lived on the other side. 

But bewitching doors exist everywhere.

I would like to say, please, open a door today.  And step through it.  Give yourself permission to follow your own inner voice...and keep your own faith.

Rustic.   (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Ruby Red.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Blue Brothers.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

Mercury's Door.  (Photo by Beth Arnold)

It's your life.

                                                                   ---Beth Arnold in Paris