The Window Was Closed

Venizelos family tombs, Chania, Crete

I photographed this window at the Venizelos family tombs in Chania, Crete. It is not only a beautiful sight. It is a choice: to show that hearts think and minds feel.

How strange it is for a heart to think instead of feel. And how strange, then, that we keep so many windows closed.

"When one door closes, another opens," we say. But no one talks about windows. No one talks about how, with a few simple steps, you can take a breath and find an opening onto something different. Something new.

The window is our entry into this world. The door is our exit. When we step out we leave, and when we step in we live. Because when we were children we did not think so much — we simply felt. We had no ulterior motive beyond a love that was true and unguarded.

Looking at this work, someone will ask: if the heart thinks, why is the window closed?

Because we are afraid. Afraid to show that we are vulnerable, afraid to feel, afraid to be seen as human. So we shut ourselves in, and we close off our connection to the world.

When you look through a window you see the inside of someone's home — what they are thinking, how they are feeling, how well they have cared for it. You see them in a moment when they are not ready to be seen. That is why we hang curtains. That is why we put bars around the heart, around the mind, around the life.

Until we are ready — washed, dressed, tended in body and soul, ready to face the day and show who we actually are — the window stays closed. And when we are finally ready, it opens just enough to let some air in.

But who notices a window while they are walking out the door? Who notices the mind while they are feeling with the heart?

The roles have been reversed. The heart used to feel, and now it thinks. The mind used to think, and now it feels — and it says: stop, heart, let me regulate you — and manages only to manipulate its own existence. Its role reversed. Its soul reversed.

Do minds have a soul? They do. Do hearts? They do. And windows, and doors? Yes. We are simply not used to seeing people. To feeling them. To listening to them. To loving them without reservation.

So what, in the end, is a window, and what is a door?

Perhaps this text is a window trying to open. Because, if you noticed, it is closed.