For some, there is no choice

Prospective Immigrants Please (Take*) Note

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

--Adrienne Rich
*I'm not sure if "take" is in the title -- can't find my book
that has it. 

I loved this poem the first time I read it. What it has come
to be about for me has to do with the experience of going
into the foreign country of my own self-- the deep and
sometimes dark places. I used to think that it was "better"
to do that, and now I understand that, as Rich says, it is
possible to live worthily without that. Still, I believe that I
have no choice in the matter. I went through that door a
long time ago. When I meet others who choose to go
through that door, I feel more understood and more
connected and I remember why I'm there, even when
it's not so comfortable.