At the Threshold

How do you view life?  Positively?  Negatively?  Do you view the future with fear, or resignation?  Or do you view the future with hope, or expectancy?

The typical description people often use is "glass half-full, or glass half-empty" but this is simply too trivial a metaphor.  In small things, such as glasses of water, people can behave one way, yet in their attitude towards life they might more often behave the other.

Truth be told, few of us are all together one way or the other.  I think a more apt analogy is this.

We are, each of us, at a threshold.  An entrance, which is also an exit.

On one side of this threshold is open sky, warm sunlight, fresh air, green trees.  On the other side is a cave, protected from the elements, but dark, hard and cold.

When we stand at the threshold looking towards the open air, we can see the possibility of success, of help, of friendship.  We can see other people out in the open air, and we can see how they are doing.

But when we get scared, when a cloud covers the sun, or the wind turns bitter, we tend to retreat into the cave.  We face inward.  We enter a place where the only things we can see clearly, if at all, are just at our own skin.  And if we go too deep, we cannot see at all.   We only know what we can feel.

There can be a perception of security when we first enter the cave, but before long we start imagining all of the dangers which might lurk in the cave with us.  To be sure, some danger might be there, but we imagine far, far more than truly exists.

Which direction we face is a choice.  The result of the choice is a viewpoint. 

Do you spend time believing that the world, or people in the world, or the great unknown are actively against you?  Or do you feel alone, cold, unsure where to go?  Are you paying attention to how you feel, without even seeing others around you?  Then you are facing the depths of the cave.  You might even be walking deeper into those depths.

If you can turn around, and walk out into the open, if you can get to a place where you see the light shining all around you, you will also see that the light shines on others, as well.  You will see that the world is happening to all of us.  If it is sunny, we can all enjoy it. If a cloud covers the sun for one of us, another stands in the newly revealed sunlight.  And if it rains, we can band together to build shelters for many.

I know people who have, by any external measure, a very good life, who are, nevertheless worried and distressed.  And I know people who have had many hardships -- hardships which would cause despair in most people -- who actively love life and the people in their life.  

We hear stories of people who face disaster, or extreme illness, with what we call a heroic attitude, who have an appreciation of life we admire.  These people were faced with the choice of which direction to face, and they turned away from the cave.

Making that decision, facing the light of the world, does not require that we have first faced destruction, death or disease.  We all, each of us, can choose to face the wide open world and see the possibilities.  There may still be dangers, pitfalls and pain in the cave behind us, but we can choose not to dwell with them.

We may stumble.  We may turn back at times, when faced with a cold wind, but if we make up our mind to face the sun, we will live, love and laugh more fully than we ever would, in a cave.


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