Pre-Ramble: A couple weeks ago, two friends and I took a “girl’s weekend” trip to New York City in celebration of one gal’s 50th birthday. The birthday girl hadn’t been to New York in over fifteen years and the third in our group had never been there. (?!) I had worked in Manhattan in the late 1980′s B.C. (before children), and so, was able to serve as designated tour guide. 

We stayed at the historic, “famously luxurious” Waldorf=Astoria on Park Avenue in midtown. Apparently, the Waldorf=Astoria name is officially written with a ”double hyphen” in order to achieve a “visually distinctive look.”  Mission accomplished.  Note: You can tell a lot about a hotel by the quality of the public restrooms. The powder room off the lobby at the Waldorf is top notch. Individual marble stalls have their own little sinks, gilded woodwork, and actual doorknobs.

As it happened, while we were in town, the United Nations General Assembly was in session up the street. Did you know that every U.S. president since Roosevelt has stayed at the Waldorf=Astoria? They have an actual Presidential Suite. Anyway, due to the gig at the U.N., the hotel was crawling with diplomats. It was very exciting. A continuous stream of motorcades pulled up to the curb; purposeful people moved in and out of elevators; clusters of grandly dressed women made hushed conversation with short, dark gentlemen in crisp shirts. Understandably, security was high. The exterior perimeter of the hotel was lined with cement barricades and an entire Command and Control Center was set up on the steps of the church next door. Easily, thirty to fifty policemen were congregated in and around the area at any given time. Note to Secret Service: If ten of you are standing around in the lobby of the Waldorf in suits during the daytime on a weekend, you are not inconspicuous.

Where are we going with this? As we would come and go from the hotel each day, we were greeted by a curious phrase etched across the entryway doors – PLEASE USE THE EVOLVING DOORS.

Evolving doors? The words evoke an existential, Harry Potter vibe. Did they really mean to use the word “evolving”? Or, had the “R” been scrubbed off the front of the word on each of the doors somehow? Is it in any way feasible that a hotel as buttoned-up as the Waldorf would miss being “punked” in this way?  And, was it just a coincidence that the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party, a strict proponent of fundamentalist doctrine, would encounter this Darwinian message on her first meet-and-greet with world leaders? The mystery remains, but by the time we were to leave the city, the three of us had definitely undergone some kind of magical transformation. In addition to wearing animal print, we had “evolved” in the glow of urban energy and adventure we had found through those doors.

The Take-Away: Did you know that the neural connections/pathways in the human brain are constantly expanding and contracting based on the quantity and richness of a person’s experiences?  Yipes!  GET OUT THERE!  Do something different!  Take yourself through some evolving doors!  Have an adventure… or, at the very least, check out the ladies room at the Waldorf.

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