The Door in the Wall — Don't be a chair, choose freedom

The Door in the Wall — H.G. Wells
Gems from the World - 6 December 2025

The story pierces with simplicity — a straight, complete mirror of modern human life.

Restlessness begins the journey.
That quiet unease — the sense that something is missing —
is not the problem itself.
It is evidence that possibility exists.

Where thirst exists, water exists.
Where the wall exists, the green door exists.
Where suffering exists,
the passage toward freedom already stands nearby.

Unlike dense existential literature —
Kafka’s complexity, Camus’ imagery, Dostoevsky’s vast canvas —
this story speaks plainly.
Simple, direct,
yet devastatingly complete.

The door does not need to be searched for — it returns again and again.

The door appears without invitation.
It does not wait for readiness or deliberate effort.
It comes on its own —
as if destiny itself pursues the one who hesitates.

Lionel never asked
for the wall, the door, the garden,
the warm sunlight, the fearless atmosphere.
Yet they appeared.

There is an undeniable charm —
a deep recognition that says:
this is where you belong.

Even accidental entry begins transformation.
And yet —
that is where tragedy truly begins.

Tragedy is not suffering or death — tragedy is repeated rejection of the possible.

One may enter truth, know it, experience it —
and still walk away.

Not because the garden lacks beauty,
but because the outside world
demands obedience.

Responsibilities shout louder than silence.
Angry voices command return —
as Lionel’s father did.

The garden offers friendship, quiet,
generous understanding.
But ambition, duty, and fear
pull one back into noise.

Priorities slowly replace destiny.

Debates become more important
than self-realization.

Political meetings outweigh
meetings with freedom itself.

Offices, clients, reputations, schedules —
all begin to feel urgent.

Attending to business
replaces attending to inner wounds.

With age, the excuses grow stronger.
The refusals become more practiced.

Intellect understands — yet still refuses.

One is not foolish.
One can clearly see
how repeated refusals
close the door gradually.

In youth, invitations are frequent.
The garden calls again and again —
a free life, a beautiful life,
an authentic life.

But ignored invitations
return less often.

What is rejected never leaves consciousness.

The refused invitation
sits at the very center of the mind.

It cannot be erased
because it is not external.

It is an invitation
to meet oneself —
to discover purpose and meaning.

One may reject endlessly
but cannot forget.
The unaccepted call grows heavier,
slowly eroding sanity.

Unlived possibility becomes psychological suffering.

In some sense Lionel is fortunate —
his physical life ends.

Most people continue living
with unresolved anguish,
carrying regret to natural death.

They live fractured lives —
praising the garden’s beauty
while refusing to enter it.

They remember the warmth,
the flowers, the quiet love,
the rare feeling of being understood —
and still choose otherwise.

They confess:
“This is more real than my world,”
yet insist on returning
to the hollow routine.

False choice hides behind duty and morality.

Humans claim they are choosing —
but choice exists only
when the chooser is free.

If actions arise from compulsion,
fear, conditioning —
there is no true choice.

Roles become prisons.
Repetition replaces freedom.

One becomes like furniture —
fixed in position —
yet calls this obedience
“responsibility” and “morality.”

Existential thought exposes
popular morality —
the rules culture praises
without questioning.

Unhonored invitations grow into madness.

The more one refuses truth,
the more the rejected life
expands within consciousness.

Unaccepted possibility
turns into inner psychosis.

Distance from truth
destroys inner balance.

One may survive physically —
yet live like a mad person,
cut off from authenticity.

Lionel’s final collapse is existential — not accidental.

He is found in a ditch.
Observers assume distraction
or a simple accident.

But the deeper cause
is the accumulated weight
of ignored invitations.

He returns from
a meaningless political debate —
a hollow performance.

Exhausted, disillusioned,
he confronts the futility
he always secretly knew.

The wall appears again —
but too late.

The door that once came easily
has retreated.
The invitation has expired.

The garden represents real possibility — not fantasy.

It is not metaphysical escape.
It is the highest potential
available in this very life.

To be seen.
To be understood.
To be loved authentically.

Freedom from fear,
from false responsibilities,
from unconscious roles.

The garden is destiny itself —
more real than the life
called “real.”

What we call unrealistic reveals what we have accepted as real.

Those who live in prisons
call the open sky utopian.

Those attached to falseness
call truth an ideal.

Those who love their chains
declare freedom impractical.

Truth cannot truly be rejected — it turns inward when denied.

Rejecting truth
means rejecting one’s own heart.

What is denied externally
grows internally
like a silent illness.

Hell may be external —
but truth lives within.

Fighting truth
is like fighting one’s own heartbeat.
Energy is spent resisting
the inevitable.

Opportunity fades — life is finite.

The sun sets.
Invitations do not last forever.

Truth is infinite —
but human life is not.

One may worship destiny
as a distant dream
while refusing to live it.

Desires and duties
become altars
on which destiny is sacrificed.

The final warning of the story.

You may delay the door endlessly.
You may choose ambition,
responsibility, distraction.

But one day —
when desperation forces you
to seek the door —
you may find only a wall.

And when you finally try
to open what once opened freely,
you may not enter a garden —
but fall into a ditch.

History of Existentialism

Marxism and Existentialism.

After the Renaissance, two powerful responses emerged
to diagnose modern human suffering — Marxism and Existentialism.

Human beings were no longer asking only how to live,
but why suffering exists at all.

Marxism looked outward —
saying suffering comes from economic structures,
historical forces, political systems.

Existentialism turned inward —
asking who suffers, what meaning exists,
whether humans are truly free
or merely living unconsciously.

Both began not as intellectual games
but as sincere attempts
to understand human anguish
and the possibility of freedom.

Marxism focused on external conditions; Existentialism focused on inner consciousness.

Marxism said — change the system,
change material conditions,
and suffering will dissolve.

Existentialism said —
humans suffer because they live falsely,
carrying conditioned consciousness,
becoming unconscious machines —
mere bricks in a wall.

Urban life becomes rational and prosperous
yet leaves a vast inner hollow,
a deep alienation within crowded cities.

Kierkegaard shifted philosophy inward — truth became subjective and deeply personal.

God was no longer something external.
God became the honest relationship
one has with oneself.

Truth meant radical self-honesty.
To look inward without illusion
became the essence of spirituality.

He explored anxiety, fear, inner arrest —
the sickness unto death
hidden within ordinary existence.

Philosophy began asking —
what does it mean to exist authentically?

Nietzsche shattered inherited meaning — declaring “God is dead.”

Where Kierkegaard began with God,
Nietzsche confronted a world
where inherited meaning had collapsed.

He wrote not only philosophy
but stories, poems, dramatic visions.

After him, existential thought
spilled into literature and art.

The crisis of meaning
became the central tension
of modern human consciousness.

Heidegger described existence as a search for freedom from sorrow.

Human beings were not merely thinkers
but seekers longing for authenticity.

Without being true to oneself,
freedom cannot even begin.

Existence meant confronting time,
anxiety, mortality, responsibility.

Philosophy became an exploration
of lived experience,
not abstract theory.

Sartre exposed false existence through everyday roles and responsibilities.

A waiter living like a chair —
owned by expectations —
symbolizes false identity.

One is not destined to be a chair,
yet clings to roles and duties
out of fear and habit.

Choice exists only when the chooser is free;
otherwise compulsion disguises itself
as responsibility and morality.

Life becomes repetitive
because one never truly chooses —
one merely obeys conditioning.

Simone de Beauvoir revealed how identity is socially constructed.

A woman is not born — she is made.

Social structures shape identity
until inquiry disappears.

Fear prevents investigation
into one’s own existence.

Individuals accept imposed roles
without questioning who imposed them.

Existentialism thus exposed
hidden forces inside culture,
tradition, and moral systems.

Nihilism and Absurdism extended existential insight into meaninglessness.

Nihilism said — no inherent meaning exists.
Absurdism said — meaning does not exist,
yet humans are free to create their own.

Both echo Buddha’s first truth —
life is suffering.

Vedanta expands suffering
into material causes, unseen causes,
and suffering from spiritual ignorance.

The goal is not intellectual brilliance
but understanding human angst
and freedom from inner bondage.

Story Summary

(An Existential Rendering of H. G. Wells’ Original Story)

Lionel Wallace was a successful public figure — intelligent, ambitious, and respected by society. Yet beneath his achievements lay a private sorrow, a restlessness he never shared with anyone.

Only once did he tell me his story: the tale of a green door he had seen in childhood.

When he was five years old, he was walking alone along a quiet street. Then he saw a tall white wall. In that wall was a small green door with an old brass handle. Nothing else about the street was unusual, and yet the door carried a strange call, as if it touched the heart itself. He could not stop himself from turning the handle.

The moment he stepped inside, he entered a garden where the colors were soft, the sunlight warm, and the atmosphere dreamlike yet not unnatural. Flowers shone in unfamiliar hues. The air felt alive. Creatures that looked like panthers came close to him — not aggressive, but filled with a childlike gentleness. He felt no fear. Perhaps for the first and last time, he felt completely at home.

Then a beautiful figure with kind eyes appeared and took the child’s hand. It seemed to know everything about him — his joy, his fear, his loneliness, the stubbornness within him. The figure led him into a gallery where images on the walls kept changing, sometimes showing his past, sometimes glimpses of a possible future.

Wallace said, “There, I felt that someone understood me from within — accepted me exactly as I was.” He may have stayed only a few moments, yet those moments were his first real experience of love.

And then the vision shattered. Someone from the outer world called his name loudly. The garden dissolved. The green door vanished. He was back on the street, and his father stood there, angry and questioning him. From that day onward, Wallace lived in two worlds: one of discipline and achievement, and another secret world that had once touched his heart.

As he grew older, he excelled in his studies and rose high in politics. Yet the green door kept appearing before him — at twelve, at fourteen, at seventeen. Each time in a different lane. Each time when he was alone. And each time he felt the inner call, yet some duty held him back. There was an exam, a debate, a promise. Necessity pulled him away, and longing remained behind.

He used to say, “I was always too busy. Too sensible. And above all, too afraid of losing my place in the world.” So he kept ignoring the door. He kept telling himself it was only a childhood fantasy. Yet whenever he saw a flash of green or a long white wall, a quiet unrest stirred within him.

At the height of his life, in the midst of a major crisis, he saw the door again. For a moment he thought of leaving everything behind — his reputation, his achievements, his outer world — and simply following the inner call. But he hesitated. Responsibilities returned once more. The crisis passed, his reputation grew stronger, but the pain within him deepened.

When he told me this story, his face carried both pride and brokenness. He said he had seen the green door one final time just a week earlier. After a political debate, he had been walking alone late at night. In a narrow, quiet alley, he saw it again — the familiar green glow, the same brass handle, as if it had been waiting all along.

He said, “I was terribly tired — a tiredness that even sleep could not relieve.” Yet he did not stop. He felt he might be losing his mind. He feared losing the world he had built. He feared stepping into a realm he could no longer explain in words. So he walked past it once more.

And then came news of his death.

Wallace was found dead in a deep pit. Workers said the fence in that area had been incomplete. People assumed he must have fallen accidentally — perhaps distracted, perhaps lost in the pressures of politics.

But I had my doubts. The place of his death was near the very alley where he had last seen the door. The workers mentioned another strange detail: there was a small gap in the fence, just wide enough for a man to pass through. And just beyond that gap stood a temporary wall, painted green.

Did he see it again? Did he believe the door had finally returned for him? Was he drawn by hope, by despair, or by some deep, uncontrollable longing?

I do not know. No one knows.

But in my mind, Wallace is still passing through that place — broken, withdrawn from the world, searching for his true home, far from ordinary life. Searching for the same garden that once called him with love, and that he spent a lifetime refusing. The same gentle sunlight, the same loving creatures, the same solitary figure who knew him from within. Wallace knew it was too late, that the green door was closing forever. In a moment of restless urgency — a desperate attempt to correct a lifetime’s mistake — perhaps in his final instant, with a childlike innocence, he believed he was finally going home.

And perhaps, in some way, he truly did return.