I am a doorknob.

I am a doorknob. You don’t take us seriously because we don’t have eyes or ears or the ability to write in your language. And you have learned in your small world of human beings not to notice insignificant objects or even insignificant human beings. It’s funny actually, because were you aware of my presence my life would have been so incredibly boring with your overhyped consciousness.

You see, I am stuck in this door for as long as somehow someone decides to destroy this door and even if this door is destroyed my freedom is not entirely guaranteed as the door could well get thrown away along with its doorknob. But, unlike most of you, freedom has little meaning to me anyways. I am after all here in this world to serve the door. Without it I would have no identity. I even know a few doorknobs who awaited freedom from their tyrannical doors and now they are feeling lonely sitting in a secondhand hardware store waiting for a door or its owner to take them home. I heard from another doorknob friend in this hallway who was at that same secondhand store not too long ago that the life of used doorknobs that have to wait for a new door is, indeed, quite miserable. They apparently miss their old door and could never get over the trauma of this loss. At the same time, they feel quite liberated and feel that they could finally be themselves away from the rules, regulations and expectations of the door. But then the life on the shelves of a secondhand store is also not all that exciting. Yes, there is, of course, more freedom of expression and a sense of community that all the doorknobs on the shelves could enjoy. But, then again, there is always this fear that at any moment any one of them could get picked up and disappear forever.

The first time we all got sold after sitting on the shelves of a hardware store of sorts, we really never said goodbye, because we really did not understand what it was to be taken away for good for the sake of a door. We would see our doorknob friends leave and we also were impatiently and nervously waiting to leave the routine of the shelves. We sort of thought that the world out there must be more exciting than sitting idly on those shelves.

To be fair, co-existence with doors could be quite adventurous and interesting. For instance, I have had the chance to see and hear so much by just simply serving a door of a ... Well, actually, what does it matter which door I serve? Let it remain unknown as I enjoy mysteries. In fact, as a doorknob devoted to my job of separating various artificially built spaces and serving as the connecting object between the two worlds if necessary, I could tell you that there is no need for all mysteries to be revealed. You human beings are somehow obsessed with the idea of creating “mysteries” in your creative minds—that can’t stop imagining scenarios and things— and then you spend days, months, years or perhaps a lifetime trying to reveal the unknowns of this mystery.

While I agree with you that sometimes such curiosity is critical, I think you do too much uncovering of the unknowns and you somehow never seem to stop. After one mystery that eats your soul for some time, you find some other mystery to tackle. And, at the same time[imagine the humble doorknob that I am amusingly chuckling at your humanness right now] you create and hide behind so many mysteries yourself, hoping for nobody in the world or nobody that particularly matters to the story to find out about your mystery. Let me tell you, you are all somehow taking it all too seriously. Let’s be honest, you like this game of chasing after mysterious things and you also enjoy creating secrets that you are either ashamed or scared to reveal or you simply enjoy the mysterious look. Either way, my dear humans, you ought to relax with your divisions of facts and fictions. You are often working against your nature, I have realized. Your nature is to create and live in the grey area and yet you are mostly busy diagnosing your life or others in black and white terms. Let go of these ancestral complexes that you have allowed too deeply into your lives, if I may give you my humble opinion. How unappreciative of me to give advice to my creators and Gods, you might think.

In my years of being a doorknob to this particular door, I have had moments when I have cried or laughed with you. I have been there listening to your worries, private weak, emotional, strong and logical moments when you have thought nobody else is listening to you. Some of you keep thinking that there is a “mystery” out there in the sky named “God” that is watching over you; which well might or might not be true and anyways if you want it to be true it should well be true and if you don’t want it to be true it should well be untrue. But, sometimes I wonder. How could you be so aware of the presence of an at least seemingly physically absent existence (God) when you easily forget about the presence of so many things in your immediate surroundings? You know, you have created us. So, if you think about it, in essence, you are our God. And yet, I see your weakness. Your weakness is your discomfort with who you are and your lack of interest in your routine.

You create things and once they are there you forget about them. You only remember them again when they are absent. Have you ever thought of the doorknob when it has been properly working? Have you ever thought of it other than in moments that you were closing the door shut or opening it wide? Have you ever thought of a doorknob other than the moments when you were, rightfully or otherwise, secretly doing something or trying to sneak into the secret world of another human being? Have you ever thought of the doorknob when it has served no particular purpose for you other than simply being there? Ok, maybe I am asking for too much from you.

There is only one thing that I know, my dears: You are simpler than you think and even the illiterate insignificant doorknob that I am, I could understand your desire for sophisticated facts and certainties. I could tell your own stories to you better than you can imagine, because you are all incredibly interesting characters. Even the most seemingly boring of you has a story that could excite a doorknob that sits at the edge a door and watches all day. Or, perhaps I find it all amusing and story-like as all the restricting facts in your lives appear as unique fictions to me. You are all stories to me. I used to take you more seriously. But, then as your stories impacted me too much emotionally, the door advised me to watch you like I would watch a movie: as fictive characters who come and go and do normal or strange things as their story requires them to. Keep playing the movie, keep playing your roles, keep writing your story. Keep entertaining me!

And now that you read all my ramblings, I give you the unknown fact about me that bothered you all along. I am the doorknob of room 196 at a mental hospital not too far from you. I love my location as where I am (at least on the more private side of the door where one of my two sides is facing) there lives a man who lives his life like a story. Yet, on the other side of this door, the educated doctors, nurses or the worried loved ones of the man that keep appearing and disappearing seem to be too occupied with the world of facts. They keep speculating over the diseases of the man at the better side of this door and try to seek all the one million reasons for his endless misery. But, only I know that he is happy. He is just not in love with facts. Call me a crazy doorknob, but I relate much more with the man at the better side of this door. Whenever you stop seeking facts about him and his diagnosis for the day and shut the door of 196 closed for the evening, he looks at me, chuckles and says, “They all have to relax a bit! Poor things!” And, he apathetically goes on with his story away from the huff and puff of your factually obsessed world.

No offense, I am not insulting you or anything with all of this. In fact, go on with what you are doing. Without you, even the story of room 196 will become too plain and undisputed. Go on with your obsession with facts. After all, it’s who you are. Why change?