The Wall of Doors

A Wall of Doors

One night I dreamed that I trudged through a deep canyon between two rocky mountains. The canyon walls were close together and thick, leafless bushes filled the narrow space between them. A rocky stream gushed violently beneath the tangled arch of their branches. The sun was out of sight behind thick clouds and a cutting wind, cold and malicious, whistled ominously through the rocks and barren limbs. It was a wild and forbidding place, and I struggled forward with difficulty.

As night closed in about me, I suddenly emerged from the brush into an opening devoid of vegetation. The canyon widened considerably, but on either side the walls of the canyon still rose in smooth, colorless columns of rock. At the far end, a towering white wall blocked the canyon. Shivering in the cold, I considered turning back, but the bushes behind me were now a blackened mass, and spray from the creek was beginning to freeze on the rocks and branches.

I walked across the clearing. Gravel crunched beneath my feet. In the growing darkness the wall seemed to grow taller and lean menacingly towards me as I approached. Nearing it, I distinguished a faint rectangular outline of light traced on the surface, as if a door in the wall stood slightly ajar and a bright light were shining on the other side. Elated that I might be able to pass through, I urged my numb legs to move faster. “Is it a door? Yes. . . yes it must be. But wait. . . there is another. . .and another!” I began to run. I did not know what was on the other side, but surely it would be better than this. Surely I would be able to pass through one of these doors and leave this uninhabitable place!

I reached the nearest door and searched blindly for the handle. It was now quite dark. My hand struck a smooth, round knob and I grasped it eagerly and gave it a violent twist. It was stuck. Desperately, I jerked the knob, twisting and shaking it as I did so. The door shuddered but held fast.

Suddenly I noticed that luminescent green letters were beginning to appear on the door, glowing eerily in the darkness. I stopped, my hand still resting on the knob.
“Enter, for enter you must, but be not hasty in your lust. The door you select will determine your fate; destiny here you will create.”

What was this place?

I heard a click. Looking at the knob, I saw it begin to glow in my hand. It was not green like the letters, but white and translucent. Transfixed, I leaned closer. Colors swirled immaterially around inside the knob, as though it were a ball filled with liquid. An image began to form. A lion? It dissolved as quickly as it had appeared, and then a building appeared – or was it a box? I couldn’t tell, and it too vanished.

Then, in an instant, an image crystallized, and I started as I gazed into my own face. A mirror? Was it a mirror? But the eyes in the doorknob weren’t looking at me; they were looking through me, large and vacant. Then the face – my face – turned away, and I involuntarily tensed. What would I do? Was this my future? Would it be my future if I opened the door? My gaze was riveted. I saw myself walk towards a large car and climb languidly inside, tossing a briefcase in before me. Instantly a swirl of color snatched the apparition from my view.

I continued to stare at the knob, but no new image presented itself. I applied gentle pressure and it turned easily. I stopped, thinking. My hand slipped from the knob, and the letters on the door slowly faded and the glowing knob disappeared into the darkness. I tried to make sense of what I had seen. What did it mean? The car had been large, and I had been well dressed. I had looked like a business executive. Where would this door lead? Would I be wealthy? Important? Lonely?

I walked quickly to the next door. As I grasped the knob, the cryptic message appeared again. The knob began to glow, and a brown mass began to swirl within it. As I gazed intently, the brown mass became brown hair, waving in the wind. A figure materialized and turned towards me. A set of eyes bored into mine. I started violently as I recognized the face, and jerked my hand away from the knob. The image vanished, and I was left in darkness. I reached again for the knob, but paused, my hand poised. There was intense emotion in those eyes, but what kind of emotion? Did love or hate lie beyond that door? Disturbed, I turned away.

I felt along the wall for the next door, then the next, and then the next. At each I stopped to gaze into the doorknob, puzzling over the images each one presented to my view. In one, I was alone, rowing with one oar in a boat filled with water. In another, three friends stared at me out of the knob until I felt ashamed – I didn’t quite know why – and I turned to the next door. In yet another, I saw a Ferris Wheel, filled with people I didn’t recognize, revolving slowly. As the image faded, it briefly morphed into a giant water wheel before disappearing.

The novelty of these magical doors began to wane, and I grew more and more perplexed. What did the vague symbols mean? Could I read my future in the facial expressions I saw? What future lay beyond each door? The cold began to penetrate again into my tired limbs and I became impatient. I hurried from door to door, hastily grasping each knob and pausing just long enough for an image to form before moving on. What did this one mean? What lay beyond? Curiosity fought with caution as I tried to decide which door to open. Should I take my chances in the world beyond this door – the one with the knob that glowed like the sun – or should I turn the knob that depicted me reading a book in a plush leather chair?

In the last knob I grasped I saw hundreds of doors, standing in a row like dominoes. One began to totter dangerously, as if being rocked by an invisible hand. I wondered which direction it would fall. As if in response to my thoughts, the door leaned suddenly to the right and the scene vanished from view.

Now, in my dream, I began to panic. There were dozens – maybe hundreds - of doors, and I could only choose one. Would the door I chose determine the happiness of my entire life? If so, I couldn’t afford to be wrong, but I had no way of knowing whether the decision I made was the right one until it was too late. The messages were too cryptic, and what lay beyond each door too uncertain, for me to make a decision. How could one image depict an entire life? Why should one decision determine my happiness forever?

I tried to recall the images in all the knobs I had tested, attempting to decipher each as they came to mind. Why couldn’t I experience the best of what I saw in all of the doors? I had seemed wealthy in one scene, happy in another, loved in a third. If I could combine the best of each, I would truly be a fortunate man.

A shiver of cold interrupted my contemplation. I realized that I could no longer feel my feet, and my body ached with the cold. I tried to quickly sort through the images in my mind. In which doorknobs had I been happy? Any of them should be a safe bet. To my horror, I realized that I couldn’t remember. I had been happy in the park scene hadn’t I? Or was I crying? I couldn’t remember. Where was that door? I grasped the nearest doorknob, but the scene inside it was a completely unfamiliar jumble of symbols I did not understand. I grasped another; the swirling colors within became a room full of people laughing hysterically.

I removed my hand slowly from the knob and then grabbed it again. This time the people in the knob were crying. I removed my hand and grabbed it a third time. The knob felt like ice. I held it tightly but nothing happened. Gripping it madly, I gave the knob a fierce twist. It disintegrated in my hand.

The cruelty of the situation angered me. I was forced to make a decision, but I wasn’t permitted to compare my options. I would have to decide, while my hand was still on the knob, whether to open the door or leave it closed forever. I cursed the Maker of the wall, whoever he might be, for risking my eternal happiness on a single blind decision. I cursed myself for suffering for so long in an attempt to make a decision I was no better able to make now than before.

In desperation and anger, I grasped a doorknob, held it tightly until I felt it yield to pressure, and then, deliberately averting my eyes from the image inside the knob, threw the door open and rushed blindly through.

The brightness of the sunshine made me blink. I stood in a large garden enclosed by a tall stone fence. Shocked at the contrast, I turned around quickly; the door behind me had disappeared. A set of warm, dry clothes lay at my feet, and fruit-laden trees lined a pathway leading to the far end of the garden. There, to my amazement, the garden ended abruptly at a white wall filled with doors. Above each, in letters that matched the blue of the sky, was the familiar missive,

“Enter, for enter you must, but be not hasty in your lust. The door you select will determine your fate; destiny here you will create.”