How to Get Unstuck

Yesterday, when I made my usual stop for morning coffee at Starbucks, I was greeted by a hand-scrawled sign taped up on one of the glass double-doors. It was written with a scrappy black marker that said,

             “Sorry, I’m stuck.”

At first I didn’t get it. I wondered if someone had posted it as an inside joke for a friend, or perhaps it was a clue in some sort of high school scavenger hunt. But when I tugged on the door handle to walk inside, I realized it was the door that was stuck. The staff had put the sign up as a warning to use the other door .

I stepped back to look again at that sad-looking sign. The combination of a pathetic message and poor penmanship had somehow branded this door with a passively apologetic resignation, as if it had given up all hope of ever swinging freely again. “Don’t expect much more out of me, folks. I’m stuck!”

Meanwhile, its fully-functional partner on the left was working  just fine, swinging briskly back and forth while the cheerful and chatty rush of morning customers came and went. It was as if that healthy door was a little embarrassed by the whole situation, rolling its eyes at its broken-down neighbor with every swing, saying, “You don’t see me falling apart at every little hardship that comes along, now, do you?”

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