Understanding What I Don't Understand by Looking Inward / Backward

I almost feel I should have a new category here called "Things I understand why I don't understand." There are a lot of things that affect my life directly that I just do not understand. Almost all of them center around people. I'm not the only person who doesn't understand most other people.

As for the things I understand why I don't understand, however, my first entry would be the results of pondering why people sleep with their bedroom doors closed.

For the longest time, the fact that people sleep with their doors closed puzzled me. Mom sleeps with her door closed. Jonathan would close the bedroom door at night even when the boys weren't around. Kris closes his bedroom door these days, though I don't recall if we closed it in the Before Era. I doubt it though. I'd win that argument, as I sleep with my bedroom door open. Closing a bedroom door, why would you?

The why bugged me like one of those niggling things that exist, but one doesn't really pay attention to.

Until one does.

Instead of wondering why everyone else closes their bedroom doors at night, last night I considered why I actively do not close my door, why I need that door open.

And I realized, most people do not grow up with a sibling with health problems that, if you are not able to hear their distress and come rescue them, they will die.

Okay, let's look at this realization from an adults perspective, and not from a child's perspective. Said sibling likely wasn't going to die. Per se.

Taking from a child's perspective, however, things change. That one time, as a small child, your door was open, and you heard sounds from the other room. With the moonlight streaming in from the faceted windows in your bedroom, you walked to the door and across the hall, where you heard your brother thrashing in his bed. You hurried downstairs, woke your parents, who then rushed upstairs to find your brother, what? From the child's perspective, something very bad. The brother ended up in the hospital. You didn't see him for days (FOREVER it seems). You had to explain what happened to your teachers, his teachers, they were the same people.

And so, the door stays open. You don't sleep with the bedroom door closed.

Something Might Happen™.

Okay, sure college dorm doors are closed. And the doors close when you don't want your roommate to walk in on something fun happening. And the hotel room doors are always closed. And when your host tells you, "Close your door, otherwise the dog may eat all your underwear," well, okay, you close the door then, too.

But normally, that door is open. I understand why I sleep with my door open.

After the pondering, I somewhat understand why everyone else doesn't. I understand why I don't understand [this thing at least].