Trapdoors

One of my mentors once shared with me a metaphorical riff about a man trying to get out of a bar that was filling with smoke. He closed it with, “If there’s a back door that’s unlocked, the man who knows about it won’t have the same urgency to run away that the others who are climbing all over one another to get out of the front door do.” I was young and stumped when I’d asked him how to get my big-toe-dippers to decide to go all-in.  Speaking in riddles was coach’s preferred mode of communication, painting a picture ripe for interpretation was his jam. He had wanted to demonstrate a potential solution as much as I had yearned for direction. My question and his answer met in a field of never-forget.

Even though I rarely could (and cannot now) pull the details of the fable from my brain, I can still feel the difference between a one or two-door option in my bones. The absence of an escape hatch takes the waffling out.

The most challenging part of writing isn’t how to tell a story. It’s not the construction of sentences or the choice of words or even the always-dreaded, ever-laborious editing and re-writes. The toughest part is deciding what story to tell. If topics are playing peek-a-boo behind curtains, it’s difficult to even wrestle a thought into shape. Should I home in on door number one? What if I explored door number two? Or maybe I could dig around in the rubble of door number three? The bait-and-switch between unbarricaded ingresses and egresses makes it hard to grab ahold of anything. 

I watched this happen with college athletes a lot. They would “commit” to a school, fully planning to attend for the duration and hoping to love the life that was waiting there for them, but then they would show up on campus with the back door and maybe a window or two wide-open. “Just in case,” they’d left the locks and latches off. As a result, these athletes often found themselves untethered while the ones who fastened the bolts and tossed away the keys grew firmly rooted in. Trouble appeared meaner and uglier for the former, more manageable and less threatening for the latter. The absence of an out changed the way they looked into things. 

It also granted them access to a bevy of tools and the accompanying capacity to learn how to use them. Though they never knew it at the time, fully committed athletes traded in a manhole for a magical, moveable bookcase the day they entered their brave new world. Providence often partners with those who have no back-up plan.

My friend and his soulmate were a couple for decades before they tied the knot. When the love of his life finally decided she was ready to get married, she told him. At the movies, in the popcorn line. Then she promptly suggested they “do a therapy session” to be sure they were both ready to do what they thought they were ready to do.

“Fifty minutes,” she said. He giggled. 

“Too much?” she asked. 

To which he responded, “I’m thinking, at least, maybe six hours.”

My friend’s bride-to-be had been married four times prior. Each of her “I do s” had somewhere, somehow in the living done a U-turn, pivoting into “I don’t anymores.”

She clearly had a trapdoor, and he didn’t. 

In therapy, he cried because he could see it. She cried because she wished it wasn’t there.

Theirs was a happy ending. My friend’s bride learned to look at the wicket and lock it. To face the hard head on. To not be so afraid of fear. Her fifth marriage became her last one--she closed the exit ramps.

We are not guaranteed that if we run toward the only open door, we will get out alive. Not every marriage can or should continue. Sometimes when we are lost it’s best to turn around. The point is to not draw a portal into the plans.

A rabbi, a Buddhist, and a priest are in a bar …. I still can’t recall the middle. I don’t know who died of smoke inhalation, who got trampled by the crowd at the front, or who, if any one of the three, strolled out the backdoor untouched. But what I do know is this: those with one foot dragging almost always get left behind.

P.S. Burn the Boats