On the shelf beside my bed, I have a most precious book. It’s old, beautiful and a treasured gift for me – a collection of short stories by O. Henry. Its pages are held and sewn by a thread, just like the stories of our life – stories within stories, adventures along the twists and turns of the paths throughout our life.
Today I’ll share with you the first story I ever read from the book called The Green Door.
The story begins with the narrator telling us about what true adventurers of life really are, and we then move into the story of one such true adventurer named Rudolf. It’s a story of destiny, love, trust, and finding the right door.
“True adventurers have never been plentiful. The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. Half-adventurers–brave and splendid figures–have been numerous. But each of them had a prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tierce to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick–so they were not followers of true adventure.
In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roam the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead of at our familiar curb, a cab-driver deposits us before a strange door, which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of Chance; we exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a sudden douse of rain–and our umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the Full Moon and first cousin of the Sidereal System; at every corner handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure are slipped into our fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them. We are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.
Rudolf was a true adverturer.”
And so, one day, our adventurer Rudolf was taking a walk on the boulevard and then an advertiser stopped him to give him a card – written on it “The Green Door”. The advertiser was in a hurry, so Rudolf didn’t really know what this meant or what it was for. You see, these mysterious words the green door, and his innate adventurous spirit led him to begin searching for the door – so he saw a building nearby and went in, going up the stairs, seeking the green door. And when he finally saw a green door, he immediately knocked on it. A young beautiful woman opened. She was gentle, beautiful, but looked so frail and pale, and just as she opened the door she fainted – thankfully, Rudolf catched her in his arms.
After regaining her consciousness, she softly thanked him and then explained that she had been feeling weak as she hadn’t eaten anything for three days. The poverty in which she lived was apparent as Rudolf looks around the apartment. Rudolf hurried to get her something to eat and stayed by her side. After dinner, she shared her story – about how she had lost her job and has no money to support herself now and feels so worried; about how hopeless and alone she felt because there’s no one she can ask for help.
As evening came, and the light on the woman’s face had returned, Rudolf told her good night and that he’ll come back tomorrow, and that she shouldn’t worry anymore about anything. As he was leaving, all he could focus on and see was her beautiful warm smile, which fulfilled him deeply.
Once the door closed behind him, he suddenly realized that all the doors in the corridor were green. Outside, he saw the advertiser again, and asked him directly: what is this “The Green Door” that is written on the card, what does it mean. “It’s about tonight’s play,” the man said, pointing to the theatre across the street, with big letters on top of its building that say “The Green Door”.
In a strange way, Rudolf realized that it must have been the mystical hands of fate indeed to have led him towards meeting his true love behind the green door – and as such, O. Henry writes,
“it is of no doubt at all, that Rudolf is a true follower of romance and adventure”.
I love O. Henry’s stories; we can always feel the romantic, hopeful thread in his witty, clever way of language, and the stories themselves are humble in their telling of real life people who were never the most glamorous, rich, nor brave, but were rather often quite flawed and just perfectly very human.
And perhaps one wonders, when does destiny begin? Is it when we say yes, or when we knock on a door, or has it been shaping all along waiting for its perfect time to reveal its face. A combination of both us and our own human hands, and of the mystical hands – the ways in which sometimes we notice one thing, then another, and no matter how seemingly non sensical it is actually exactly the perfect one.
I love that O. Henry speaks of adventure, destiny and romance together, because they are indeed interwoven. But to me it’s because romance itself is like mysticism – it seeks of us to imagine something beyond the lines, beyond the conditioning, to open ourselves to an unknown. It’s to be in love with life itself, its wild unknowns.
We are in a continuous dialogue with all these mystical life things, with nature itself, with the desires of our heart and callings of soul. There is a wordless language through which the sacred interacts with us, and pulls us with the secret invisible threads of what we call destiny. Sometimes it is during our most mundane moments – when we hear a song on the radio, or smell vanilla, and suddenly like a dream an unconcious memory from a time before time wraps around our entire body taking us towards a direction, where a landscape unfolds of what we were looking for all along. Sometimes, it’s a green door.
Along life’s paths, the mystical hands of destiny will lead us, and when the unclockable clocks strike their right time, we’ll see our green door. There, two worlds will meet, will touch, and we’ll find that love is not only felt in the hearts – it is known by the hands also.
Among all other green doors our soul will recognize the one meant for us. And yet it is our choices, every day, that will ultimately pave the experiences of our life and whether we will move forward in a partnership. Whoever we are meant to meet, we will, in its divine timing, when we are meant to, but whether we’ll stay together or not, is up to us.
In this way, perhaps destiny can also be seen as a series of opportunities. How we respond to them will then open other doors. One foot after another, one step after another, even if seemingly foolish, will eventually lead us where we need to be.
Follow the desires of your heart.
Because the heart knows, always.
Green is a colour of the heart chakra – and it is our heart that is the initiatory pathway to higher consciousness, and leads us always in the right direction towards fulfilling our destiny.
The invisible threads of destiny pull us forward in life, in the form of desires, ideas, thoughts and feelings. We are scent-led, fairy-led, voice-led, by the secret threads. All we have to do is listen to the language of our heart, and have the trust, faith and courage to follow it.
Even if sometimes we might look foolish.
Like Buddha says, “Life is just a fool’s joyful game – it completes and then begins again.”
It’s about embracing the beginner’s mind – with open heart and open mind approaching things, situations and people. This helps us remain flexible and to keep expanding and learning.
It is through our curiosity that we can learn new things and grow. It is by embracing the beginner’s mind, by looking at ordinary mundane things with new eyes, discovering new angles and colours and shades, that we can create new experiences for ourselves.
This playful and adventurous nature within us will rekindle marriages and long-term relationships, as we will not take our partners for granted – as we will re-explore one another no matter how many years have passed by. Change isn’t logical nor easy; and it demands imagination. By dedicating ourselves to widen our senses, and delve into the unknown and mystical, we essentially also open the doors to eroticism; we transcend the rational boundaries of the mind and the shoulds, and we start finding new ways in which to explore our partners. As the years go by, we change in our inner world, and our partners too, and we need to rediscover and re-explore the holding, the caring, what we need to feel loved and appreciated.
O. Henry writes, “We are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.”
If we apply creativity and curiosity towards our partner, and we pay attention to them and notice their evolving new shades, we’ll always find something new. This spark wouldn’t be the consequence of adventures across foreign lands, and constant adrenaline, but rather in our ability to re-explore one another through the years.
We’ll become not only explorers, we’ll become mystics and lovers, experiencing even deeper love, by creating the extraordinary from the ordinary, along the circling staircases of life. No small thing will be too small, and even in the mundane, we’ll see magic with our heart.
As O. Henry writes, very few people are true adventurers. Because sometimes we lack imagination, sit on the couch and wait for external stimulation. Other times we’re afraid we’ll fail, we’ll make mistakes, and misinterpret cards, knocking on strange doors looking foolish. But the truth is that all these seemingly foolish, non-sensical things may eventually lead us somewhere worthwhile.
Now, we can’t be completely senseless though neither, that’s no wisdom. There is certainly risk in any adventure and this is why we must have a heart that can discern which doors are worth opening and which ones aren’t. Perhaps approaching life as an experience, rather than a goal to be accomplished or a problem to be solved, is where the magic of the wisdom lies.
What I love about “The Green Door” by O. Henry is that it reminds us that sometimes we need to be a little non-sensical, a little adventurous, following those seemingly foolish signs handed to us on the sidewalks, perhaps even carving out our own opportunities. We certainly need to allow ourselves the magic to be scent-led, colour-led, fairy-led and heart-led, into the unknown and unique physical and emotional wildlands of our destiny – because we just never know who might be standing on the other side of the door. And sometimes a knock is all that separates us. Sometimes small gestures lead to big love stories.
May we all be fools in love. May we unleash the freedom of our soul. May we love outside the lines. May we explore outside the schedules. May we laugh, share, express our love, hug and cuddle and kiss and dance and play, and risk it all, because each moment of love and joy with someone we love whether a lover, a friend, a family member, a child, is all that matters in this life. May we say I love you as much as possible, may we support one another and love one another as much as we can, may we always appreciate the little things. And may we always remember to have some good ol’ belly-laughing fun.
The Birthday, 1915, by Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall called “love” the primary color of his paintings. He painted The Birthday a few weeks before he and his wife Bella married, wonderfully portraying the powerful love that they shared. I love his paintings and they always make me smile and laugh, filling my heart with all kinds of joy and warmth; they remind us to embrace the fun and non-sensical of life.
For more of my writings, browse through my Art of Love.
If you wish to support me and my work, you may do so by sharing it or donate here. For personal readings with me, you may visit my Offerings.
Your support means so much to me! Thank you wholeheartedly!
