Our lives are frequently shaped
by pivotal moments. And by pivotal I mean
involving of a point of no return. Getting a puppy, having a baby, opening a
business, starting school, ending a relationship, achieving a goal, a death in
the family. What was once there is now different. Time does not wait for
anyone, it moves as it wishes – and as humans,
we only have so much of it. We know neither the time nor hour that our time
will run out.
For some this may plant the desire in our hearts to latch onto the things
we hold dearly, to try and control the amount of time with the person, place,
or thing – and whenever it is time to change we are at a loss. Personal
identity begins to morph into association with something that is not yours to
define, and yet, we start to define
ourselves by that very thing.
As a GoT fan, and for the sake of metaphor – “The Hold the Door” scene
was a pivotal moment of the series and show. It left most jaw-dropped, wide
eyed, and probably a bit tearful. Fans were attached to a character, and within a few seconds, he was gone. Hearts broken, emotions
wrenched – most were deeply in their feels. What did you do the next day? You
were probably a little upset. I mean, you may have fallen victim to a plethora
of memes that prodded your open wounds, but by the next day you were over it.
You didn’t mire yourself down into the Swamp of Sadness like Artax in The Neverending Story (RIP Artax), no –
you moved on.
You may have been attached to the
character, but they didn’t define your being. You weren’t going to let it negatively
affect you on a daily basis. Why? It’s because you weren’t in control of what
occurred. In real life, we have next to zero ultimate control over another’s decision
or their timeline. So why does this logic so frequently apply to fiction? Why
isn’t the same train of thought applied to doing the most in your work
circumstances, moving past heartache, or accepting that your puppy isn’t going
to stay that way forever?
A wise-bearded-man once gave me this metaphor:
You have just walked through a door,
and you are in a hallway. The door you just walked through is to your back. There
is a large room in front of you, filled with other doors – ladders even, to
other stories within the chamber. You
walk into the room, and your visceral
intuition proclaims there is only going forward. You can’t go back, but Sweet
Christmas you want to – you go back to the door,
and it isn’t quite shut. It’s cracked open,
and you find yourself looking into the pensive that is filled with the Once-Was,
but that’s all it is full of. The past,
what once was. Not what is now. It
looks nice, it feels comfortable, but it isn’t real.
Going for the Harry Potter analogy here, the Mirror of Erised will only
ever show us what we do or have, desired.
Dumbledore warns us that no matter how deeply we peer into its alluring sheen, we
will never be satisfied. It will always make us thirst.
Take heart! Move forward! Close the door. You have faith in the
simplest of things on a daily basis – a light switch, the brakes of your car,
your Instagram account not getting spontaneously hacked – how much more faith
do you need to believe that what is to come will almost certainly be better
than what once was? Close the door.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen (Hebrews 11:1). Therefore, close the door.
