The Open Door
We humans are pretty proud of our intelligence. We’ve built skyscrapers, landed on the moon, mapped the human genome, and carry more computing power in our pockets than NASA had during Apollo.
And yet, sometimes we’re not so different from chickens.
If you’ve ever kept chickens, you’ve probably witnessed this yourself.
A chicken can be standing right next to an open door leading to safety, food, water, and shelter, see it, and then walk right past. Instead, it will pace back and forth, stare at the fence, and occasionally attempt a solution so ridiculous - like trying to stick its head and body through a 1/2 gap - that you wonder how the species survived long enough to become dinner.
The funny thing is that we humans do the same thing.
How often do we walk right past an open door because the answer seems too simple? We convince ourselves that the solution must be more complicated, more sophisticated, or require more effort. We spend hours analyzing, worrying, researching, and second-guessing when what we need is already sitting in plain sight.
Sometimes the simplest answer really is the right answer.
Go for a walk.
Call a friend.
Get a cup of coffee.
Relax and take a deep breath.
Just take the next right step.
You may be surprised at how often an answer comes when we stop trying to force a solution.
And when we ignore that open door, we often find ourselves doing the human equivalent of a chicken trying to squeeze through the bars of the coop. We push harder. We get frustrated. We invent increasingly elaborate solutions to problems that already have a perfectly good answer.
Life has a way of reminding us to pay attention to what’s right in front of us.
The older I get, the more I appreciate simple things: simple answers, simple kindnesses, simple moments of gratitude. It doesn’t always need to be hard.
The open doors are there if we’re willing to notice them.
We pay for how we spend our attention, in both good ways and bad. Now I do my best to be sure there are more days when the account ends with a positive balance.
But back to the chickens….
Of course, despite all their questionable decision-making, I’ll still be chasing chickens in my flip flops around the yard, making an even bigger fool of myself. I’ll still be gathering eggs and occasionally running late because one of them has decided that today’s mission is to test the structural integrity of a fence.
And honestly, it’s hard to stay frustrated for long when they give me half a dozen fresh eggs every day.
My favorite dinosaur is still a chicken.
And really, who doesn’t love a dinosaur that makes breakfast?
