Words that have stuck with me for a few days. Cotovsky's character speaks about his life as a series of "dead-ends." It's a powerful and sad speech, and it crystalized something for me.
As life rolls forward, we do come to dead-ends, there are false roads, there are slammed doors. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that being a "wise guy" or a "serious" person means that you learn that everything is a dead-end. And you learn to think "What's the point of knocking on the door?" And of course, we think of the final dead-end of the Big Sleep.
So being a wise guy or a serious person really is a dead-end too. It's a deadening way to live your life. It's a life of closed and unopened doors. And it's a dead-end one can avoid. We can instead choose to live with an "open door policy." We can choose to be naive and innocent. We can choose to believe that if one door closes, another will open.
And just because things have gone a certain way doesn't mean that it can't or won't be different the next time around. We must believe. That the future can/will be better. That we can see the world with clarity, and see the "Sea of possibilites" instead of a long series of "dead-ends."
So yes, we knock on the next door, and hope for the best. Or we find rooms with no doors at all, only open windows. And it's OK to dream and to believe in things. It's OK to fall and to fail. It's OK to pick yourself up and try again. It's OK to act like everything is new and untried. And it's worth giving it a go. What the hell! It's life!
