I have a new theory about your foyer.

Finally my volleyball playing days are paying off

There’s a particular feeling you get when you’re walking through the tunnel.

You’re not yet where the game is going to happen. But you’re no longer in a place you can rest either. You’re in between those two places.

The tunnel is the place where you gather yourself before stepping out into the arena. And it feels very much like your last moment of stillness before the lights and the noise and the pressure to perform begin.

I ran through a lot of tunnels during my volleyball playing years. The best ones, in my opinion, had motivational signs hanging on the walls.

I especially enjoyed the ones that looked like they were laminated by an assistant coach with a lot of feelings and access to a very enthusiastic font. “SEE IT! BELIEVE IT! ACHIEVE IT!” “BRING THE FIRE!” “CONCEDE NOTHING!” “PLAY LIKE A CHAMPION!”

Listen, they were cheesier than the ball my grandma served on Christmas Eve, but nobody cared.

Because the moment before you walk out into the world is a very good moment to remember who you are and what you’re made of.

I was thinking about the tunnel this past weekend after a Zoom with a client whose partner’s entryway was one long hallway. A gallery kind of hallway with walls covered in framed awards and medals and certificates and all kinds of proof that he had accomplished things.

Is a wall of work accolades the first thing you want greeting you when you walk in the door of your house?

I was not into this situation. At all.

Not because accomplishments aren’t worth celebrating. They absolutely are. But a giant gallery wall of work accolades in your face when you open the front door feels less like Welcome home and more like You are now entering the south wing of the presidential library.

I always thought that what you really needed when you opened the door of your home at the end of the day was something softer than performance.

I still think that. Except.

What if your foyer isn’t an entryway?

What if it’s a tunnel between the locker room and the arena?

What if we stop looking at entryways as drop zones and start seeing them as transition spaces between home and whatever waits for us “out there?”

I like this idea of entryway as passage.

As a channel between home and away.

As the last thing you see before heading out into the world and the first thing you see when you pull back into safe harbor.

A hallway that reminds you who you truly are and what you’re made of as you come and go.

Every day, we cross that threshold and go out in the world and get pulled in a hundred directions. We get evaluated, rushed, ignored, needed, stressed, compared, overstimulated. We adapt. We perform. We negotiate and brace and handle things.

We get busy. We get tired. We get praised for certain parts of ourselves and not others. We get used to handling all the things. We adapt to what our family needs, what the day needs, what our LinkedIn profile needs.

In the middle of all that, it’s easy to lose touch with the most grounded, steady, true version of ourselves.

And little by little, the self we are being can drift away from the self we actually are.

Which is why home matters. Because it’s a place that says: You’re safe here. You’re known here. You’re still yourself here.

And since your entryway is the borderland between your personal life and the public world, between being your nerdy self and being “on,” between safe harbor and open sea … what happens there matters more than we usually think.

So I’ve been thinking.

Maybe our entryways need to do more than store our keys and umbrellas and coats and shoes.

Maybe they need to do more than just function.

Maybe they could be spaces that shape how we leave and how we return.

There are very few places in the world that will remind us of the things that are true about us, the things that matter to us, the kind of person we are.

There are very few places that will show us what we love, what we can trust in ourselves, and what has already been proven by our lives.

There are very few places that will say to us, “All of these things are true about you. You are loved. You are capable. You are creative and funny and resilient. You have a history. You have a center. You belong somewhere.”

There are very few places that will quietly and consistently tell us: This is who you are. This is what matters. Go out there. Then come back home.

Your foyer could be one of those places.

Maybe a tunnel is better than an entryway.

Maybe what belongs by the front door isn’t just a place for our keys, but a little laminated, all caps belief in the person who holds them.

Your friend who did not use even one Taylor Swift lyric in this letter,
Vivian

PS. Bring the fire. And play like a champion.

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