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There’s the Door — Now What?
When shown the door, you alone decide to walk through it or not.
There is advice available everywhere you turn.
Solicited and unsolicited — advice is as abundant as air.
Taking this a step further, there are whole industries offering programs for self-improvement, diet, exercise, gaining new skills, learning new trades, and so on.
Each of these is opening a door for you. Step through, and there is a new life, new possibility, new potential available.
But as the proverb goes,
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
You can show someone the door to get from here to there. Step through this door, and you can build a career, choose your own path, get healthy, and so on. But you can’t make anyone walk through it.
I tend to use the analogy of paths to be traversed in life. But there is something broad and unspecific about that — compared to thinking in terms of doors to pass through. For some things, they’re not out there, in the open — so you need to open the door to get to them.
Some doors lead to paths. Others lead to more doors. But whatever the case — you choose to pass through it or not.
