It is always the smallest things that remind us of how early we are in our own path to enlightenment.
This morning's attempt to leave the house for the workday: The door closed behind me and the "click" instantly was translated into "My keys!!!!!" So, Your Humble Chronicler spent a good hour and a half attempting to defeat the simple catch. The initiaI 95% of my time was distributed among:
- trying to trip the latch with plastic credit-card type things in my wallet -- which bent and crumbled;
- climbing up to peer into the garage attic space, to see if it was an open space that may have led to another crawl space that would allow me into the house (no);
- checking to see if any windows were let unlocked (none);
- cursing at the cat, who was inside and was, of course, totally useless;
- calling my landlord's nearby office to see if he could run over and let me in (out of office);
- calling landlord's wife at home for same reason (answering machine);
- calling fiancee in a desperate quest to see if she, perhaps, had hidden a spare house key anywhere outside (out of the office and no);
- reattempting the credit-card trick (failed);
- attempting to pick the lock with miscellaneous pieces of scrap metal and a small screwdriver (failed);
- attempting to slide the latch open with an empty plastic windshield wiper fluid bottle which I cut with a pair of pruning chears to suit the task (failed).
The moral: Really explore the problem before you even attempt what may seem like a simple or obvious solution.
Where I failed: Had I studied the way the door and the latch were set, I might have had better luck from the start.
Where I succeeded: Tenacity -- never quite gave up, fully.
There ya go.
