The Secret Door

Once a man found a treasure trove that contained hundreds of gold and precious stones. Because of his secret knowledge, he became an extremely rich and wealthy man. His family relied on him, his foes feared him and his friends were jealous of him. As he was an extremely cautious man, he never told anyone about his secret, not even his wife who he loved more than anything in the world. Instead, he built a castle on top of this treasure, with him only knowing the secret door to the treasure that laid under his castle. Every day, he would walked down the small alley until he came to the secret door of the hidden treasure. This became his routine and his favorite pastime. 

One day, he decided to go hunting with his friends. It came to pass that he met a terrible accident which required his friends to take him home unconscious and barely alive. The accident left him bed-ridden for a long time. By this time, he was terribly afraid with the condition of his hidden treasure. What if one of the servants had found the secret door and stole all the treasures? What if something happened to them? 

Unable to bear the suspense any longer, he decided to go and check on his treasure when everyone else had gone to sleep. When night came, he slowly got up from his bed and walked towards the secret door. He realized that he could no longer see well in the dark. But it didn't matter to him - he knew the way like the back of his hand. 

Finally, he came to the door, took out the key from his neck and turned the doorknob. It didn't open. He tried again, but it won't open. He continued all night with no result. He became so frustrated and angry that he started banging on the door with all his might until he became totally spent and unable to go on. He was slumping near the door when the first ray of light shone through the window. 

Weary and tired, he opened his eyes and realized, he had built other secret doors a long time ago and had used the wrong key to open this one specific door. 

In our lives, we build our own treasures everyday. It may be our job, business, choice of industry, parenting skills, anything. We work at it everyday and somewhere down the line, we make that familiar path, that routine that works well for us, that way we know like the back of our hand. And soon, we start to forget that there are other ways to get things done, other opportunities, other choices. We rely on our known familiar path with a one-track mind, sometimes fearing that the other choices or unfamiliar routes/choices will fail. We become blind, hard of hearing to our own reasons, slave to our own habits of familiarity. 

And then comes the day when that we could no longer turn the key and open that door we are so familiar with. We become confused, frustrated, angry. Some resort to giving up, some continue to bang on the door, some trying in vain to break the door by force -- but all with the same result, frustrated failures. 

However, if we pause and stop -- stop to look away from the door and the unmatched key, widen our horizons, we will see that other doors are there. Doors that we have built long time ago, doors that we have forgotten in us, doors that will lead us to our treasures. It is in us to open our eyes, to see in the light and lift our vision off that single door that refuse to open.