A window at night that has always unsettled me. This strange boundary separates us from the world, but only by a sheet of glass. It keeps the rain outside and the warmth inside, yet it never completely closes us off from whatever is happening beyond it.
We put windows in our houses because we want to know whether the morning is gray or golden, watch the rain move across the yard or see the first leaves of autumn collect along the porch, and watch the world with a cup of coffee, while it continues without us for a little while.
A window gives us permission to look into a room without entering it, and catch glimpses of a life that isn’t ours, but the same window makes us visible. When we sneak glances, we start letting others steal glimpses. We open the curtains, letting people see the parts of our lives that aren’t polished: the dishes in the sink and the pile of shoes by the door.
Eventually, if we trust them enough, we let them see much deeper things—the memories that still hurt, the fears we don’t say aloud, the pieces of ourselves we have spent years carefully tucking away, but not everyone who looks through the window of our lives is looking with kindness.
I have learned that people can study you without loving you. They remember the places where you are tender and understand exactly how much you will tolerate before you finally walk away. When I was younger, I thought being open was almost always a virtue. If I showed someone who I really was, surely they would handle that knowledge carefully, but people are not always gentle with what we give them. We tell someone where the glass is thin, and they spend the rest of the relationship pressing against it. And the person we trusted most is the very person who taught us why the curtains needed to be there.
But I don’t think becoming more guarded means becoming colder. I can let sunlight into my life without inviting everyone inside. I can allow someone to see me without giving them access to every room.
The beautiful, ordinary pieces of a life should have somewhere to spill out into the world. But there are also rooms within us that deserve privacy. Some memories should remain behind closed curtains until we decide who is worthy of seeing them.
Windows remind me that anyone can look through glass, but knowing what is inside is something else entirely. Maybe the question we should ask isn’t simply “Who is looking into my life? But who have I allowed to see my soul?”
Leave a Reply