Most of us live our lives in fear. We worry about what others will think to the point that we forget what that makes us think of ourselves.

 

We fear the failure more than the success, and walk through life along tentative lines that leave us frustrated or depressed. Then we take drugs or drink to help blur what we have become.

 

I have fought those kinds of fears most of my life. I will have a modicum of success and then pull a shell around myself to protect the progress. It was easy to make excuses for not stretching further: family security, a poor economy, fear of ridicule, too much work, lack of confidence.

 

The truth is there are a million reasons not to do something. Opening a new door is pretty scary when we don’t know what’s behind it.

 

The impetus for me to open the door was the fear that when I stopped wondering what was around the next corner, I was really just buttoning up and waiting for the winter.

 

I wrote The Stranger at the Door (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009) mostly as a challenge to myself; a reminder not to be afraid of new things, and to think in new ways. I was especially saying to myself to “open the damn door, otherwise the noise is going to keep me from ever getting a good night’s sleep”.

 

Glenn K. Currie

 

 

The Stranger at the Door

 

There is a stranger at my door.

I hide behind my chains and locks,

Afraid of his judgement.

He has traveled a great distance

To demand more from me

Than I know how to give.

 

Through the drawn curtains,

I hear him taunting me for my fears.

“The Earth is too large”, I say,

“The universe is too small”, he replies.

My mind runs in circles

As I watch the mirror change.

 

I am torn between less and more,

What I am and what can be.

My vision is flawed by temerity.

Yet, if I dare, I will see

Who now stands so quietly,

This stranger at the door.