Open the door

Open the door

Today’s expression is a metaphor. We’re going to talk about “opening the door to” something. When you signal that something new is now possible, you open the door to that new idea or that new possibility.

It really does help to think about this in terms of a door being open or closed. Imagine that you want to do something, but it’s completely impossible. The door is closed. But if that thing then becomes possible, the door starts to open a little.

So let’s pretend that you want to work from home permanently. Your boss hates the idea; she wants you in the office every day. The door is closed to the possibility of working from home every day. That’s your company’s policy and you have to accept it. The door is closed.

But now imagine you get a new boss, and he comes in from another company. He’s a little more comfortable with working from home. So soon after the new boss takes over, he opens the door to a little more working at home. When he opens the door to more working at home, he signals that this is now a possibility. It wasn’t possible before. But now your new boss is signaling that it’s starting to become possible. He’s opening the door to the possibility.

I want you to notice here that when your boss “opens the door” to working from home, he’s signaling, indicating, that maybe this new thing is possible. He’s not throwing out all the rules. It’s not a complete change. It’s a first step, it’s a signal, that what was impossible before, might be possible now.

I have always assumed that the way I should communicate with all of you is through my voice, through the transcripts on the web site, and in e-mails to all of you. I have not wanted to be on video, except for the how-to videos in the Plus membership. I haven’t wanted to do these main lessons on video. But with the 500th lesson , I opened the door to the possibility of doing more video on YouTube.

I opened the door to the possibility. I created a YouTube account; that was the first thing. Without a YouTube account, the door was closed! Then we streamed Lesson 500 on YouTube. That was the second thing. Then I waited a while. And I started to think, you know, I could maybe do something on video with the full lessons.

And now—guess what—on a trial basis (a trial basis!), I am uploading these main audio lessons to YouTube . So I opened the door to the possibility with the 500th lesson. Before, it wasn’t possible; I didn’t even have a YouTube account. Then, I opened the door to the possibility by uploading a few videos. I’m still not sure how much to do on YouTube, but at least now it’s possible.

At the very beginning of today’s lesson, I was talking about King Edward III, the 25-year-old bachelor who became king in 1936 . For a long time, marriage among royals was strictly business. You married for power, you married for influence, you married to save your family, you married for diplomacy, you married to produce a son—there were many reasons to marry, but love was not one of them.

However, I said, times were changing and the door was open to marrying for love. The door was open to marry someone who was not a prince or princess in some far-flung territory. So what I meant was, it was just barely possible. The door was open: instead of being impossible, like before, now it was possible. It wasn’t common; it wasn’t generally accepted; it wasn’t seen as normal. But it was at least possible.

Well, you heard the rest of the story: King Edward III chose an American divorcee as his partner…and the door was not open to marrying a divorced American.

Pity Edward III, right? Times have changed even more and the door is now open for royals to marry divorcees from across the Atlantic. King Edward III’s great-nephew Prince Harry did it in 2018 .

JR’s song of the week

JR’s song of the week is called “Fool for Love” by Lord Huron. The opening lines go like this: “I’m leaving this place behind, and I’m heading out on the road tonight. I’m off for the hinterlands, way up north, where the tall trees stand.” Hinterlands is a way of saying the country, the forest, where there aren’t many houses or people or roads. “Fool for Love” by Lord Huron is JR’s song of the week for today.

See you next time!

That’s all for today, Thursday, September 29, 2022. Most of the news you read is about how long the queen lived, how many places she went, how many presidents she met, how many duties she carried out. And that is interesting. But her real talent was to be able to use a monarchy—which has no real power—to exert influence. You would never design a hereditary monarchy today, but she was a master at using the system, the way it exists. We’ll talk about that in a future lesson.

But next week, we’ll be on to new topics.

Now I sneaked this in there before, but yes we are putting these lessons on YouTube now . If you want to try watching the lesson instead of listening, then go to PlainEnglish.com/YouTube and that will take you to our YouTube channel, where you can watch the lessons. And if you do that, leave a comment and tell me what you think. Because I’m not 100 percent committed to this. Tell me what you think, if you like the video format. PlainEnglish.com/YouTube.

That’s all for now. See you right back here on Monday.