This idea from a friend named Phil is simple on its surface, but it holds a universe of meaning. It asks us to question what a "closed door" truly is. Is it a fact, or is it a story?
A Door Is a Story We Tell Ourselves
Phil’s point is that a closed door gets its power from a relationship. It means something to the person who shut it, and it means something to the person who was shut out. For anyone else, it's just wood and a frame.
Your World, Your Story
The world as you perceive it is nothing but your own projection.
A locked door can be a rejection, a protection, an ending, or a puzzle. The door doesn't decide. You do. The meaning isn't in the object; it's in the story you've built around it. We all live inside our own projections, and so the same door can look like a wall to one person and a minor inconvenience to another.
Truth Has Many Voices
There isn't one "truth" about the door. The person who closed it has their reasons—a need for safety, a final decision, a move toward something new. The person facing the closed door has their own reality—a setback, a betrayal, a sudden stop. Both truths can exist at once. Outside of this personal drama, the door itself is silent. It has no opinion.
We Are the Ones Who Turn the Key
Closing a door—literally or metaphorically—is an act of creation. It's a choice that carves a new reality out of endless possibilities.
Choosing Your Path
Every choice we make closes countless other doors. By choosing one future, we exclude others. This isn't a failure; it's what it means to be human. When someone closes a door, they are using their freedom to shape their world. They are the author of that moment.
Making Your Own Gate
Each man makes for himself his own gate.
The obstacles in our lives don't just appear. We participate in their creation by how we approach them. A closed door becomes a barrier because we define it as one. It's a boundary we draw, a limit we accept. It originates from our own will and our own story.
When the Story Ends, It's Just a Door
Phil's use of "meaningless" isn't cynical. It's liberating. He suggests that meaning is a temporary layer we paint onto things. When you step outside the story—the relationship between the "closer" and the "closed-on"—the paint dissolves, and the object is just an object again.
Doors We Face Every Day
The Job Rejection
You're rejected from a dream job. For you, that closed door is a universe of meaning: failure, disappointment, a questioning of your worth. For the company, it was a routine decision. For the world, it was nothing. The pain and the meaning are entirely contained within your story.
The End of a Relationship
One person ends it. For them, closing the door is an act of self-preservation or a painful necessity. For the other, it's a world shattered. For anyone outside their shared history, it's just a fact, stripped of the love and loss that gave it meaning.
The Final Door: Phil's Life and His Last Choice
Knowing that Phil took his own life forces us to look at his words through a new, more difficult lens. He closed the final door on himself.
1. Phil, the Closer
In his own terms, Phil's final act was one of ultimate authorship. He was the one closing the door. For him, it may have been an escape from a story that became too painful to live in, an attempt to find an exit from being itself. It was his definitive, tragic assertion of control over his own narrative.
2. You, the Closed-On
For you, his friend, that door is anything but meaningless. It is a profound and harrowing presence in your life. It demands a re-reading of every memory, every conversation. The challenge becomes how to hold the meaning of your shared experiences so that his final act doesn't erase them.
3. The Silence Outside
This is the hardest part of his idea to hold. From a cosmic perspective, the universe is indifferent. A single life, and its end, is a fleeting event. But Phil's act, seen through his own philosophy, becomes a powerful, tragic metaphor for the human search for meaning in a world that offers none on its own. It's a testament to the fact that meaning, in the end, is a human creation—fragile, powerful, and desperately important.