Doors and Windows

The system of doors and windows are, when you think about it – and I have, far too much – among the most fundamentally irritating features of modern domestic architecture. They exist in a state of perpetual contradiction, embodying the human condition's most tiresome paradoxes with a smug, architectural permanence that no amount of remodelling or smart-home nonsense can disguise.

Take doors first. Doors demand to be opened and closed. Constantly. This is their entire job description – to be either open or shut, and to switch between the two at the precise moment when the person on the wrong side of them most urgently requires the opposite state. You open a door to enter a room; the moment you are inside, you must close it to prevent drafts, maintain privacy, or stop the cat from escaping with half its dinner in its mouth. Yet the instant you sit down – perhaps to eat, read, or simply exist without interruption – someone else will arrive and require it open again. The door, like a passive-aggressive butler, never initiates; it merely watches, hinge-squeaking its judgment, waiting for you to do all the work of changing its position. It is the ultimate symbol of human indecision made manifest in wood or metal: we cannot commit to being in or out, so we build portals that force us to declare it every few minutes.

And then there are the idioms. “When one door closes, another opens.” How uplifting. How optimistic. How utterly misleading. In reality, when one door closes, it's usually because someone else has slammed it in your face, and the next one is either locked, ajar just enough to let in a cold wind, or leads to a cupboard full of unwanted items. The phrase pretends that opportunity is a polite series of portals, all patiently waiting their turn. In truth, life is more like a hallway of malfunctioning automatic doors at an airport: one slides open while you're still fumbling with your boarding pass, another closes on your suitcase, and a third refuses to budge while it apologises in three languages.

Windows, meanwhile, are even worse – hypocritical peeping toms made out of glass. We install them specifically so we can look out. The whole point is outward gaze: to admire the view, monitor the neighbors, or reassure ourselves that the world hasn't ended while we're doom-scrolling. Yet the moment we peer through one, we become acutely aware that the arrangement is not in our favor. We crave the panorama, but recoil at the possibility that anyone outside might peer in. Hence, the curtains, blinds, nets, frosting, and those ridiculous one-way mirror films that make your house look like a low-security government building. We want to see without being seen – the architectural equivalent of “I can dish it out but I can't take it.” The window is a one-way mirror for the soul: transparent when convenient, opaque when it suits our paranoia.

And the idioms again! “The eyes are the window to the soul.” Charming. Poetic. Utterly terrifying if taken literally. Imagine if souls really were visible through the eyes – we'd all be walking around with blackout curtains over our faces, or at least those ridiculous wraparound sunglasses people wear indoors to look mysterious rather than hungover. No wonder we spend so much money on curtains: if the eyes are windows, most of us would prefer to keep the soul-blinds firmly drawn. “A window of opportunity,” meanwhile, suggests a brief, glorious aperture of possibility. In practice, it's usually a tiny, high-up bathroom window you have to climb through if you've locked yourself out – awkward, undignified, and liable to end in bruises or a call to 911.

Then there's the hybrid horror: the French door, which combines the worst of both. It's a door that pretends to be windows – all glass and light and “look how open-plan we are!” – until you realize it's still a door that needs opening and closing, but now you're doing it while everyone outside can watch you struggle with the handle like a man trying to lose his own dignity.

In the end, doors and windows are not conveniences; they are daily reminders of our inability to commit. We can't decide whether to be enclosed or exposed, private or seen, in or out. So we build these halfway measures into every wall and spend our lives negotiating with them. Perhaps that's why real estate agents describe houses as having “lots of natural light” – it's code for “prepare to feel constantly observed while simultaneously resenting every cold draft.” If we truly wanted consistency, we'd live in caves or bunkers. But no: we insist on these see-through portals of indecision, then complain when the metaphors they inspire turn out to be as unreliable as the things themselves.

It's enough to make you want to brick them all up. But then, of course, you'd have no way out. Or in. And the idiom for that? “Between a rock and a hard place.” Which, ironically, has nothing to do with doors or windows at all – but feels strangely appropriate.

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Inspired from laughing at the hilarious David Mitchell columns about everyday words and objects in The Guardian. David has not written about either doors or windows, yet.

Apologies for slightly erratic spelling, I'm struggling with my grammar checker, and as an American who has lived in ex-British Hong Kong for over a decade, I no longer know if I've realised or realized something, or if I've cancelled or canceled an appointment. I am forever an outsider looking in.