On Keys in Drawers

We’ve recently moved to a new house and while in the process of trying to get myself organized, I’ve found a great many keys, most of which are useless because I have no idea what, if anything, they unlock. I’ve got old house keys, general door keys, bicycle lock (or coke machine) keys, mailbox keys, strongbox keys, keys to file cabinets, decorative keys, keys for our dormitory in Prague, keys to cars, and who knows what else.

The interesting thing to me is that some of these keys would still open the doors if I knew which door to choose. This key might open the door to my neighbor’s house from 8 years ago. This key might still open the door to the house I used to live in. Other keys, like the one to our dormitory in Prague, don’t really have anything to open any more. This dormitory, and at least one of the apartment complexes I’ve lived in since I came back to the states have been torn down to make room for bigger and better things.

So I have keys that might open doors, if I knew where to find them. And I have keys that will only open doors into the past.

It isn’t that I’m a key hoarder. In fact, most of these keys are probably secondary or tertiary duplicates that were made as backups and then put into a drawer. They may have been used once or twice to check the quality of the copy or to be used by a guest or visitor in our home, but for the most part, these are the forgotten and unused keys. Their more fortunate brothers and sisters are either being used now or were turned in at the end of our sojourn in the place to which their doors led.

It makes me think that we have many ways that we go in life. We walk in and out of many different doors. Sometimes we are trusted enough, or we have enough power and ownership, that we are able to use the door as a barrier and claim the space (if only for some short moment) as our own. Using the key, we can exclude others and mark our territory, or we can open the gates and let the Other in. The power of our time of opening and closing are limited and eventually we move to other doors or the doors themselves disappear and our power of opening and closing with them. So enjoy the twists, the turns and the clicks of life, because someday the key you are using will be a forgotten memory or simply a talisman of the past sitting in a drawer or, if you are more fastidious, a landfill, or, if you are more green, recycled into something entirely different.