We were in a maze.
We’d discovered the maze while randomly visiting the art projects out in deep playa at Burning Man. It was no small maze either – made of wood posts and plywood, it measured some 70+ feet to a side, and the walls were 8′ tall. It was also really tricky.*
It had been eight, maybe twelve, minutes since we’d entered when, from over one of the walls (we had inadvertently split up) my friend shouts out “Hey! There’s a door here!”
“There are no doors in mazes,” I solidly replied.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe them per se – in fact I gave it nary a thought after my proclamation. It was just… true. Mazes were things with walls and passageways and dead ends. Doors did not enter the picture.
By now of course you all can probably guess where this story is going, and what I was about to exclaim not more than a few minutes later:
“Holy crap! There are doors in this thing!”
And it wasn’t even the same door.
It’s a funny, fluffy example, but I love it as a reminder of just how, when something comes up that doesn’t fit our view, it’s not so much that we don’t believe it, or that we actively resist it, it’s often more that it simply doesn’t even register. No such possibility exists. It’s so completely outside the realm of (our personal) reality that before we even become aware of it it’s been dismissed and we’re moving on with our day, acting as before. Which equally means, quite potentially, staying as constrained as before.
Our life remains the same.
Hence why I like reminding myself with this story. Who knows what I/we could be missing on the other side. Who knows what I/we could learn, could do, or could be, with that new piece of information, with that broader view, and with those new possibilities. Worlds can open up.
Because, while in a maze in the middle of the desert it was a very physical door that I was all too ready to miss, quite often the doors that we dismiss and don’t go through are very much metaphorical, and very much transformative.
* Seriously, the maze was killer. The people who made it did a fabulous job. Doors, bridges, and more, and it was well laid out in order to obfuscate some of the necessary routes. My friend and I spent 30 minutes in the maze, escaped out, went back in, came out again, was told a hint or two by people outside who had completed it, went back in a third time, and still were stymied. So we chose to D&D the heck out of it! We came back the next day with hand-made graph paper and proceeded to map the sucker out like a dungeon… and thusly discovered a route we’d delightfully missed. In rather short order, past few more doors, traps, and bridges, we found our way to the exit. Superbly well done maze!
Lynx Thoughts 