Somehow my friend and I got into swapping stories about chickens. I was telling him that I got to eat a couple eggs this summer–the best I’ve ever had–that were less than half an hour from the chickens. He asked if the eggs were brown or white, and I told him they were green, a pale olive, but that I had eaten pink ones, too. And they all looked alike inside. (Sort of like people, hey?)
I didn’t know if one hen laid only green eggs and another the pink ones, or if the eggs would surprise you with their color every time one appeared, or what the rooster had to do with it all. I didn’t know, either, at what age hens began producing eggs, or how long a hen can live. Eating freshly laid eggs, I told my friend with a laugh, doesn’t suddenly turn you into a chicken expert.
Chickens are like anything else, I said. You could spend a lifetime learning about them. And some people actually do, learning whole universes of other stuff along the way. It’s one more instance of my observation that every door leads to an infinite world.
It’s true. Start anywhere, and one thing leads to the next, to the next, to the next. Tunnels lead to more tunnels or to a sudden flight of stairs. The roads make sudden turns. And it just goes on and on. Part of it, I think, is because we’re such curious creatures. We keep asking questions: How? Why? Always? What if? And the big one: What happens next?
We keep peeling back layers upon layers of information, spending minutes, hours, months, decades, every answer revealing yet more to be discovered, to be known, to be experienced. And it all grows us. We even get to keep the memories, and they themselves can be tunnels to explore. Isn’t that amazing?
“Every door leads to an infinite world.”
Part Two of that is, “Everything can be a door.” That’s because anything at all can wake you up to the moment, get you to seeing all the possibilities before you, asking what you want to make of them, which one’s are calling your name, singing the best music.
I heard once that it was a custom in a certain spiritual tradition to train its practitioners to become alert whenever they passed through a door. Maybe they had a bell suspended from their doorways to ring as an additional signal to wake from their thoughts and dreams. I don’t remember exactly. But it seems like a wonderful exercise.
Wake up and walk on. I like that.
Eventually, I suppose, you could discover that every moment is a doorway. that you, yourself, are a door, opening to an infinite world.
Be curious as you go, and keep your sense of wonder. It’s all a mystery. Be humbled by its immensity, but celebrate the fact that you’re alive and perceiving, right in the very midst of it. Keep your senses of humor and adventure honed. You never know where your road may lead. Who would have guessed, for instance, that we’d get to these musings from a conversation about chickens and eggs?
Sending you smiles.
Warmly,
Susan