The Lives We Live

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
- Flora Whittemore

Maimana, Afghanistan

Since the beginning of time, doors have
symbolized both great opportunities and thwarted dreams.

Varanasi, India

Morocco

The open door is a metaphor for new life, a passage
from one stage of life to another, and metamorphosis.
Closed doors represent rejection and exclusion.

Kashmir

The Door
Too little has been said
Of the door,
its one face turned to the night’s
Downpour
and its other
To the shift and glisten of firelight.

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

For doors are both frame and monument
To our spent time,
And too little
Has been said of our
coming through and leaving by them.
- Charles Tomlinson

India

Cambodia

Tibet

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed
And wealth, and company.

The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by,–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.
- Emily Dickinson

Kabul, Afghanistan

Mingun Pagoda, near Mandalay, Burma/Myanmar

West Kabul, Afghanistan

India

Los Angeles, United States

The door swings open:
O god of hinges,
god of long voyages,
you have kept faith.
It’s dark in there.
You confine yourself to the darkness
You step in.
The door swings closed.
- Margaret Atwood

Kabul, Afghanistan

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Bombay/Mumbai, India

Kabul, Afghanistan

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Monastery at Rolous, Cambodia

Macedonia

The Door

Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there’s
a tree, or a wood,
a garden, or a magic city.

Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog’s rummaging.
Maybe you’ll see a face,
or an eye, or the picture of a picture.

Go and open the door.
If there’s a fog
it will clear.

Go and open the door.
Even if there’s only
the darkness ticking,
even if there’s only
the hollow wind,
even if nothing is there,
go and open the door.

At least there’ll be a draught.
- Miroslav Holub
translated from the Czech by Ian Milner

Yemen

Vietnam

The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and
comfort – the opening, terror.
Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing -
the opening a wonderfully joyous moment.
- Andy Rooney