I was only home for an hour or two after a long day of serving coffee, cleaning washrooms, and organizing random canned foods at the Mission Possible soup kitchen (see my blog post called “Selfish”… not completely related, since this was an event for my youth group, but I did feel good about serving) before an elderly couple that I am becoming friends with invited me to an open house at an art gallery.  It sounded interesting, so I quickly chowed down my dinner and headed out with them.

The gallery had three rooms with distinctly different artwork in them.  The main room featured giant canvases with paintings of the night’s sky.  Each one was painted at a certain intersection in Vancouver.  They were each selling for $22,000.  It was an interesting concept for a series, but I didn’t quite get it.  Was there a deeper meaning?  Was I just not deep enough to understand?  I wasn’t too concerned though… there was free wine.  Any painting looks good when drinking free wine.

There were a few really good works of art though: a ceramic sculpture of a tooth with a broken crown (entitled “sweet tooth”), a ceramic sculpture of a kid peeing his pants (entitled “accident”), and an impressionist painting of  looking out a  hostel window in Paris (that one brought me back to the three days I spent in Paris  a while ago… so good).

However, the thing that really intrigued me about the art gallery was not the art or the wine or even the people there… it was this plain white door that simply said “Private.”  It took everything within me to not open that door.  I’m not sure if it was my rebellious side wanting to disobey the restriction, or if there was something more to it.  Maybe it was the idea that something special could be behind that door just waiting for me to come join in the adventure.  Whatever the reason for my wanting to open that door, I’m glad I didn’t.

I’m a person with little privacy in my life… I share a one-bedroom apartment with a roommate, I sing songs about some of my most painful moments, I blog almost daily about anything and everything going on in my life, I’m currently on Facebook and Myspace, and I’m considering more (perhaps Twitter).  The thing is - I may be willing to sacrifice my own privacy, but if there is ever a “door” saying Private, I expect myself to not walk through it.  Why?  Because disrespecting privacy is like stealing intimacy.  It’s like the inappropriate-hug-guy.  I don’t want to be that guy.