One road will close..another one will open

Or one door will close...another one will open (that's what it sounds like to me in this song by the great Afro-beat musician Tony Allen).



The road/door closing and another one opening will mean something different for each particular person. For one person it could mean that the door is closing on an economic opportunity, while nearby another one is opening, and the person might or might not realise this. Or a relationship ends and a door will always open for another one, although you might not realise it.

For me it has to do with each person's personal, spiritual, even artistic development. All around you, you will see people who are happy to walk through certain doorways, and try to get you to walk in through them, and even reward you for your loyalty in choosing the same path as them. That is their special path, even though it has been travelled by thousands of other people, even millions, and after a while you begin to see the limitations of this road. They interpret the signs around them in the same way others have done before, as if it was something special, when in fact they are not creating, they are just going through an endless cycle of repetitions and of self-justifications. They will draw in shreds from other spheres, thus appearing to "understand the world", to be "sophisticated", but then reprocess these shreds so it all points in their own direction, along the path that they have chosen. They will consider themselves artists and pander to the latest trends, and produce art or books to deliberately take advantage of those trends. Their plagiarise others' works and ideas, or personalities. Whatever happened to their integrity?

This would be a more spiritual/artistic reading. At a more personal level, as one grows older it becomes more and more apparent that there are people around you who do not seem to accept the choices you have made in your life, or seem to think they know you better than you know yourself. When you are younger, you are so caught up with discovering life that you barely even notice that this is going on. From an early age, you learn to follow your instinct and you don't bother much if people think you are being foolish in their eyes. But as you get older, you take a look at the people around, of you own age, or older and you see how how overbearing, arrogant, dull, pompous, uninspired they can be, while they battle away in their little corner, in their chosen path, in the door that they have chosen to open. They become nationalistic or patriotic, bigoted, unforgiving, recalcitrant, smug, self-satisfied, largely because they feel so constrained by the barriers they have built up about themselves, by their lack of freedom, often simply their inability to move geographically, to be trapped in one place. But they can't stop banging this little drum that they have been banging all their lives...because then their lives would not make much sense, would they?

As you get older, you learn not to trust appearances. People who appear to be the happiest are often exactly the opposite. People will show you photos of their perfect families, of their accomplished siblings or children...but behind the scenes, there is something that is bothering them, they are dissatisfied, or they are frightened of something, tangible or intangible. As Henry David Thoreau, who retired from civilisation to live in the woods near Walden said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." Around the same time, Emerson was writing about transcendentalism, a school of thought which offered the individual a way to choose his own individual path.

That is how I interpret this song...do not be afraid to walk back out of that door, which will possibly be slammed shut behind you, and calmly go about choosing your own path. Say you were just visiting, "thanks for the ride".