The Door

I recently found this poem, which my friend had read to me in college.

Prospective Immigrants Please Note
by Adrienne Rich

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.

We loved it then for the line, "The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door." We were feeling the weight of our future and the cost of change.

I still love this poem. I have lived between cultures. I have lived half of my life an American and then my formative adolescent years were spent in France and Cote d'Ivoire. I returned to the United States, seeing things "look at me doubly." Though I had no real choice in the matter. There was no way to cling to old traditions, only confusion about who I am and what the cultural shifts meant.

I have also experienced the door of choosing to leave Christian communities. I no longer believe many of the tenets that Christians use to define themselves. Yet I can never see the world without using the lens of my upbringing. Again, I feel that shifting identity, and a sense of something lost. But I'm not one who likes to "let much blind me." I press on, following my conscience, looking for other ways of knowing.