THE MYSTERY OF DOORS

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
Graham Greene in The Power and the Glory

I love doors; always have. I like plain doors as much as ornate ones. Every door that I have never been through is a mystery, like the red door on University Avenue in San Diego. It’s unlikely that I shall ever go through this door, but I will never pass it by without wondering what’s on the other side. I like windows, too, but they seem to me to be for looking out onto the world from inside. There is less mystery to windows. They don’t say, “People are coming and going here.” A door is a statement about possibilities.

Although his work is crafted masterfully, Graham Greene has not commanded my attention as much as some other writers have done; but few statements from world literature have stuck in my brain as tightly as this one from his best known novel. When I was working as head of school, I tried to persuade every person who worked in a school to believe what Greene was saying is true, and that we should never let down our guard because we never know on which day that decisive moment will come for a child in our care. People who care for children, and we all are responsible to some extent, should never go into a day thinking it will be ordinary and unimportant.