Closed doors can open opportunities.

On our family day out in east London yesterday we encountered three closed doors.

• The community garden in Dalston I wanted to show my wife: closed until 1pm on Tuesdays.

• The canal-side restaurant we’d planned to visit for lunch: closed on Tuesdays.

• The pub for our Plan B lunch: closed.

But the closed doors didn’t stand in the way of a good day. Because…

at the community garden, we’d nudged open the tall gate. A woman approached and apologised that they were closed for the weekly pensioners’ coffee morning. I explained how I’d fallen in love with the garden last time I was here and wanted to show my wife. We were welcomed in. Afterwards, the woman introduced herself as Marie, the garden’s founder. We got chatting and she told us her story about bringing a slice of joy and peace to a busy, concrete-dense part of the city.

And then…

after a 20 minute walk along the canal, arriving outside the pulled-down shutters of Towpath restaurant, we headed towards another pub - which was closed. Across the street, I sat on a bench outside a (closed) vintage furniture store-cum-cafe and thought, where do we go now? With luck, a few minutes later the owner of the shop arrived to open up. Was I waiting to go in, he asked. No, I replied, I was looking for a pub recommendation for lunch. You want to try The Baring, he said. Great food. And that’s how we ended up at a lovely neighbourhood gastro pub we’d never have discovered on our own. As you can see from the photograph, this door was well and truly open ;)

So as in life and career journeys, closed doors do not have to mean closed paths and shuttered opportunities. Closed doors can lead to unexpected and unintended discoveries!