An invitation is different than an obligation
Dear Void,
Lately I’ve been leaving the back door open.
Partly for the cats.
They wander out into the sunshine when they feel like it, then pad back inside for a temperature controlled nap.
I don’t carry them outside.
I don’t coax them into the yard.
I simply leave the door open.
An invitation is different than an obligation.
I’ve started to wonder if that’s true of life, too.
Maybe that’s why I have ninety-nine tabs open on my phone.
Why I leave articles ninety percent written.
Research notebooks strewn about with random facts.
Ideas wait patiently in little digital windows.
A question I once had.
A curiosity that briefly lit up my mind.
A version of myself reaching toward some kind of truth.
Closing the tab has always felt strangely permanent.
As though I’m not just dismissing an idea…
I’m abandoning the person who wanted to know, too.
The person I was for those few seconds.
Maybe I’ve been trying to preserve every version of myself by refusing to let anything close.
But, the cats don’t need the door to stay open forever.
When they’re ready, they come inside.
The sun moves.
The afternoon changes.
Eventually, I close the door.
Not because I no longer want the gremlins inside.
But because the invitation has already been extended and received.
Maybe that’s true of dreams, too.
And old identities.
And the thousand tiny curiosities that have shaped me into who I am in this present moment.
Just as I know I will never leave my door closed, I’m also sure I’ll ever become someone who keeps only three tabs open.
Or someone who finishes every project before dreaming up the next one.
Curiosity has always been one of the ways I love the world. Perhaps the most important way.
I don’t want to lose that.
I don’t want to become so disciplined that I stop wandering.
But I do want to trust that not every thought needs to be preserved for it to matter.
Not every dream needs to become a destination.
Not every version of me needs to be kept alive.
Some came to teach me.
Some came to comfort me.
Some simply came to pass through.
Maybe that’s what an open door is really for.
Not to keep everything inside.
But to let life come and go without fear.
Maybe that’s true of people, too.
Some stay for a lifetime.
Some only long enough to change the direction you’re walking.
Some drift away so quietly you don’t realize they’ve left until months later.
I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to keep every door open.
Just in case.
Just in case someone came back.
Just in case I became that old version of myself again.
Just in case one unfinished dream suddenly called my name.
But maybe life doesn’t ask us to hold every door wide open forever.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll prop the back door open again.
The cats will decide for themselves whether today is a sunshine day or a nap-inside day.
I’ll open new tabs on my phone and new project seeds will be jotted down.
Life, it turns out, doesn’t ask me to keep every possibility alive.
It only asks me to stay open to the next one.
Maybe that’s enough.
Maybe a life isn’t measured by how tightly we hold on…
but by how graciously we welcome what arrives, and how gently we release what has already left its mark.
I’ll leave the door cracked.
Not because I’m afraid of missing something.
But because I finally trust that what belongs here knows the way home.
—L
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