Before the Action
Before the Door of Action stands a gatekeeper. A man from the audience comes and begs for admittance to Action. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed to enter later. "It is possible," answers the gatekeeper, "but not at this moment."
Since the gate leading into Action stands open as usual and the gatekeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance. When the gatekeeper sees this, he laughs and says: "If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest gatekeeper. From hall to hall, keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect that even I cannot bear to look at."
These are difficulties which the man from the audience has not expected to meet; Action, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, with his huge pointed nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter.
The gatekeeper gives him a folding chair and lets him sit down at the side of the gate. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the gatekeeper with his importunity. The gatekeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his preparation level, his expertise, his follower count, and many other things, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as gatekeepers put them, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be admitted at this time.
The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in order to bribe the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper accepts it all—courses purchased, videos consumed, books read, podcasts binged—saying, however, as he takes each gift: "I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone."
During all these years the man watches Action almost incessantly. He forgets about the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and doing something real. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his prolonged watch he has learned to know even the fleas in the gatekeeper's fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to persuade the gatekeeper to change his mind.
Finally his eyes grow dim, and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the Door of Action. Now his life is drawing to a close.
Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his stay condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the gatekeeper. He beckons the gatekeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to the man's disadvantage.
"What do you want to know now?" asks the gatekeeper, "you are insatiable."
"Everyone strives to take Action," answers the man, "how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?"
The gatekeeper perceives that the man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: "No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it."
The Modern Translation:
The gatekeeper is your own mind, whispering that you need more preparation, more expertise, more followers, more equipment before you can speak.
The gifts you offer are courses consumed, productivity videos watched, inspiration content binged—all in the name of "getting ready" to create.
The other gatekeepers you imagine are the established creators, the algorithms, the perfect competitors who seem unreachable.
The door was always open. It was always meant for you. The only thing keeping you in the audience was your assumption that someone else had to let you through.
The cinema made your grandfather a professional audience member for two hours at a time. Television extended that to the living room. The internet put the theater in your pocket, available every waking moment.
But the door to creation was always there, unmarked, ungated, waiting.
The gatekeeper was always powerless.
The permission was always yours to give.
Stop waiting. Walk through.