Alice grits her teeth, preparing herself. She bends over, aiming her head at a weak spot, and starts to run, picking up a good speed. She bangs her head into the wall as hard as she can and collapses back. The wall remains unchanged, but it seems to have a little air of mockery.
“Ow,” she says, rubbing her head. “It’s no use. I’m never going to be able to get into my living room.”
“Doesn’t it have a door?” you say. “Most living rooms have doors.”
“No, they don’t,” Alice says. “You get into the living room by bashing your head against the wall until it breaks down. Duh.”
“I found this door over here,” you say.
It swings open easily.
“…I feel kind of stupid,” Alice says.
—
Bob grits his teeth, preparing himself. He bends over, aiming his head at a weak spot, and starts to run, picking up a good speed. He bangs his head into the wall as hard as he can and collapses back. The wall remains unchanged, but it seems to have a little air of mockery.
“Ow,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s no use. I’m never going to be able to get into my living room.”
“Doesn’t it have a door?” you say. “Most living rooms have doors.”
“I’m just going to have to accept that I have to bash my head against this wall for the rest of my life,” Bob says, “or never get to enter the living room.”
“I found this door over here.”
“There’s no such thing as doors,” Bob says condescendingly. “I have been trying to get into this living room for twenty years. Don’t you think I’d know if there was a door?”
“No, seriously, I just walked in the living room.”
“That’s just because you’re lucky,” Bob says. “Privileged people like you assume that everything is easy for everyone else. Well, it’s not. Some of us have to enter the room by breaking down the wall with our skulls.”
“You can enter through the door too,” you say helplessly. “It’s right here.”
Bob is ignoring you as he begins to bash his head against the wall once more.
—
You’re talking to Charlie on the phone. “I just don’t get it,” he says. “I don’t understand why I can’t go to my living room like normal people. I think I’m going to stop trying.”
“You can’t give up,” you say. “Quitters never win and winners never quit, you know? You just have to try harder. Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, after all. The harder you work, the luckier you get. The price of success is hard work.”
“That’s a good point,” Charlie says. “I really should try harder.”
There is a loud crash.
“What happened?” you say.
Charlie’s voice is broken and weak. “I think I have a concussion.”
—
You’re talking to Dani on the phone. “I just don’t get it,” she says. “I don’t understand why I can’t go to my living room like normal people. I think I’m going to stop trying.”
“There’s a door.”
“No, there isn’t,” she huffs. “I’ve checked.”
“Look, I’ve been through this with Alice, and Bob, and Charlie,” you say. “All of their living rooms have doors, even though they didn’t know it. Yours does too.”
“Other people’s living rooms might have doors,” she says, “but mine definitely does not have a door.”
“Yes it does,” you say. “You’re just not looking hard enough.”
“I have looked through EVERY SECTION OF WALL and there is NO DOOR HERE,” she says.
“Maybe there’s a place you’re not looking.”
“I called the builders! They said they fucked up!”
“No one fucks up that badly.”
“Well, this time they did.”
“You’re just in denial,” you say. “You just need to look harder for the door. Here, I’ll come over tomorrow and we can look for the door together. I’m sure that’ll help you find it.”
“No, you won’t,” Dani says, “Because there is no door! You are solving a problem that is different from the one I have!”
When you go over to Dani’s house, you can’t find a door. But she has to have a door! Everyone does! You wonder if maybe she hid the door in order to protect her self-image of not having a door.
Dani bangs her head against a wall. It does not seem to be an attempt to enter the living room.
—
Edgar has hired a bulldozer.
“You know,” you say, “there was a door in the wall you just knocked down…”
“Doors are a myth,” Edgar said, “made up by Big Architecture.”
“You destroyed half your house,” you say.
“Yes, but I can finally get into my living room!” Edgar says.
“So can the rain,” you comment.
Edgar waves a hand airily as if to dismiss minor details.
The bulldozer, not properly braked, reverses two feet and runs over a cat.
—
“It won’t open,” Felicity says.
“Some doors get stuck,” you say. “You have to put your back into it and try a little harder.”
“I’ve tried that,” Felicity says, “and all that happens is I get a concussion.”
“Well, this time you’re doing the right thing,” you say, “rather than the wrong thing. That’s bound to make a difference.”
“I suppose,” Felicity says dubiously, and pushes.
The door swings open.
“…holy shit I’m in my living room!” she says. “Am I going to have to do that every time?”
“Probably,” you hedge. “Most heavy doors don’t get much less heavy.”
She looks around, basking in the interior decorating she never before got to see. “Totally worth it.”
Psmith said:
This is not a particularly convincing argument if you happen to have met lots of people whose living rooms really don’t have doors.
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Psmith said:
And conversely if most of the living rooms whose doors people purportedly find in fact turn out to be outhouses.
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jossedley said:
The parable is deep. Reconsider the story of Dani, grasshopper.
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veronica d said:
Win!
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jossedley said:
Awesome
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Patrick said:
“I can’t get into my living room,” says Gerald. “And my head hurts.”
“Ok, I’m getting tired of this do I’m just going to skip to the end. I bet you’re bashing your head into the wall and not using the door. Go use the door.”
“I can’t,” says Gerald.
“Everyone says that. But what you definitely can’t do is charge through a wall, so give the door a try. I guarantee you have one.”
“No, I mean, I can’t use the door. It’s nailed shut.”
“…why?”
“Well, every year since I was about five years old I nailed a few more planks over it.”
“…why?”
“To be honest… poor decision making and a stubborn refusal to listen to all the adults telling me not to do that. Plus all my friends were doing it.”
“Ok, umm…”
“So now I guess I have to smash down this wall with my head.”
“You can’t though. No one ever succeeds at that.”
“But I can’t get through the door, so I have to.”
“No, you have it backwards. What you can’t do is smash the wall with your head, so you’re going to have to go through the door. Go get a hammer and start pulling out nails. Eventually, the door will work again.”
“But that will take forever!”
“Charging the wall will take for-never cuz it’s never gonna work.”
“You say I should try to fix the door. My childhood friends say using the door is impossible and I should smash the wall with my head. Who should I believe?”
“Their track record is 0:All. Mine is nonzero. That’s at least a start.”
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Doug S. said:
I like Edgar’s approach. Enough people seem to be having trouble with their doors that finding an effective way to brute force the problem might actually be worth it. Even if the results aren’t quite as good, it’s better than banging your head against a wall…
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ozymandias said:
Edgar was supposed to be a metaphor for e.g. alcohol abuse as a cure for social phobia or depression. It definitely solves your original problem…. while it gives you a whole bunch of other problems you now have to deal with.
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tcheasdfjkl said:
I’m actually having trouble figuring out what all of these were metaphors for – they clearly all have to do with mental health but I can’t quite make sense of them. Any chance you could explain more? I know I’m being obtuse but I think I would find that valuable.
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imperfectlycompetitive said:
Seconding tcheasdfjkl’s request. I think I get the idea of “banging one’s head against the wall”–it’s a common idiom, after all–but I’m also struggling with the rest of the post. Any help would be, well, helpful.
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Guy said:
Not being Ozy, I can’t guarantee that this is correct, but, loosely:
Think of the living room as a metaphor for good mental health, or maybe life skills, construed very broadly. The door is whatever the correct way to get there is – basic social conventions, coping skills, something of that nature. Beating down the wall stands in for just applying vague, directionless “effort” to solve the problem. Alice and Bob aren’t there yet, and don’t really know how to get there. They get some kind of advice/treatment/whatever from somebody, and the advice is (implicitly) correct. Alice takes the advice, does well, and is somewhat embarrassed about the whole thing. She moves on to live a happy productive life. Bob doesn’t believe the advice is valid, or he doesn’t accept treatment, or something. He does not manage to overcome his challenges, and just pounds away at the problem in the same (unhelpful) way as before.
Charlie is in a similar situation, but the advice he gets is unclear or unhelpful, or he doesn’t really listen to the specifics of it. Again, he just “tries really hard”, going nowhere (and, indeed, causing harm). Dani is similar, but there isn’t any advice that could help her. Her living room actually doesn’t have a door, and she’d be better off learning to live without it (as opposed to acquiring whatever it represents). But the person advising her doesn’t listen, and just tells her to “keep trying”, even going so far as to assume that she’s faking whatever problem she has.
Edgar, Ozy already explained. He found something like a solution, but it does way more bad than good and he didn’t even bother to try a less destructive method.
Felicity is the most complicated one: whatever advice she gets does work, at least to a point. But it’s hard; it involves major (unusual) adjustments to her lifestyle, or an immense amount of attention to something that “should” be second nature, or a similar extra burden. She will be able to live a fundamentally normal life, but she’s going to have to work harder to get it than most people do. She’s in a better place than Dani, but this isn’t exactly a one time thing for her the way it is with Alice.
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ozymandias said:
Yep, Guy’s right.
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po8crg said:
It struck me as a metaphor for Brexit as a solution to the failure of the British government to invest in deindustrialising poor town.
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Guy said:
I would like to object that moat doors that stick (rather than moving very slowly) stick because they don’tquite fit the frame, not because of their weight.
But this is an otherwise excellent post.
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Guy said:
Also sometimes they do get easier to open if, for example, they stick due to excessive paint on one side, and the paint wears away.
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Murphy said:
Xiao:
“I can’t go to my living room”
“Get a heavy rock, it’s better for knocking holes in walls than the bones in your skull”
Yannis:
“I can’t go to my living room”
“The trick isn’t to enter the living room but rather to realise that you’re already inside it”
“AAAAHHHH, I’m trapped in my living room without any food”
Zach:
“I can’t go to my living room”
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. “
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dantobias (@dantobias) said:
Donald Trump:
“What we need is a BIGGER, STRONGER wall!”
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