Self-Defense

I saw you yesterday.  I was thinking about writing you all morning.  I needed to hear your counsel, but then I got quiet enough and heard your voice in my own mind.  And then I realized I didn't need you after all.  You'd already taught me what I needed to know about the situation I found myself in.  

Running couldn't wait yesterday.  For two days in a row, I came upon a minute when I knew I needed to leave the house and be on my way.  The cacophony of ruckus in my own mind was too loud, too continuous, too debilitating.  I needed the quiet and calm that comes from the open road.  The rhythm of the road has a way of knitting me back together in an orderly way, so I can recognize myself again.   

I realized yesterday that in this world there are door-lockers and non-door-lockers.  I'm definitely I'm a non-door-locker by nature.  If I do lock a door, it's a decision.  A conscious decision followed by action.  It's nothing I habitually do.  I don't ever have the sense that I need to protect the things on the other side of the door.  I may protect the people on the other side of the door, but I'm generally not a protector of things.

But here's the thing.  In my life, I'm attracted to the door-lockers.  Like opposite magnetic poles attracted to the door-lockers.  And not just one -- my life is full of door-lockers.  People who take measured steps to ensure their safety and the soundness of the insides of their homes.  I walk around in their lives like an observer at a zoo, seeing how they set up barriers to entry, protect their inner sanctum.  And it's foreign to me.  

I've always thrown my door open, really with reckless abandon.  I welcome in all sorts of people and invite many of them to take up residence inside my very own heart.  For the most part, it's worked out well.  People have come and rearranged my insides, the furniture of my being, with and without my permission, and in the end I was better for having the inner makeover.  People have come in and made my heart their home, and I'm delighted that they've stayed.  Some people, however, do have larcenous souls, and their stays beyond my unlocked doors have proven costly and upsetting, like vandals and thieves.  

I've enjoyed learning from the door-lockers though.  They take steps to care for themselves, offer up the simplest of resistances to unwanted entry.  One of them told me once that safety is no accident.  He was aware of what his end goal was -- safety -- and how to get it -- keep the doors locked.  The simplicity of this idea eludes me.  Just like other simple ideas.  I was in my 20s before I learned that it's easier to keep your room clean than get your room clean.  I was in my last semester of college before I learned the classes were there to be attended, not avoided.  I didn't understand the value of a made bed since it would just be unmade later, until someone told me by that logic, I should never eat again because I'd just be hungry again later, too.  

But the simple ideas of this world are sinking in.  They're growing in their appeal.  It's tough work cleaning up after vandals and thieves.  Door locking might be in order. 

And that's what I heard when I got quiet enough.  I heard you say I shouldn't be surprised at the state of the state because I'd invited it in.  So I went straight home.  And locked my door.