Are You Closing Doors You Have Never Actually Opened?

Chris Gardner did not set out to teach me anything. He set out to survive. But somewhere between his first rejection and his last, I found three lessons I have not been able to put down.

ABOUT THIS POST

WordPress Daily Writing Prompt  •  24 May 2026

“What’s a movie you expected to hate but ended up loving?”

Every day, WordPress.com publishes a single question to its global community of bloggers — the Daily Writing Prompt. Millions of bloggers across the world see the same question on the same day. When a blogger responds and tags the post correctly, it enters a shared global stream — discoverable by every other participant. No follower count, no paid promotion. The prompt is the equaliser.

Today’s question is not a simple film survey. It probes the gap between expectation and experience— the space where prejudice is examined, where humility enters, and where the most honest writing happens. That is precisely the territory this post enters.

When hundreds of thousands of bloggers respond to the same prompt on the same day, what rises above is writing that goes one layer deeper than the obvious answer — that uses a film not as a review subject but as a lens for something true about how we judge, how we resist, and how we are sometimes gloriously wrong.

Let me be honest with you. When someone first suggested I watch The Pursuit of Happyness, I quietly dismissed it. A Hollywood drama about a struggling salesman turned stockbroker? Inspirational music swelling in the background, tears on cue, predictable triumph at the end? I had seen that film before — just with different faces.

I was wrong. Profoundly, embarrassingly wrong.

What I found when I finally sat down to watch it was not a feel-good fable dressed up as true story. It was a relentless, almost painful examination of what it actually costs to refuse to give up. Will Smith’s portrayal of Chris Gardner — a real man, a real struggle, a real transformation — dismantled several assumptions I had carried for years about resilience, success, and the nature of hardship itself.

I did not expect to be moved. I did not expect to be challenged. I did not expect to take notes.

I did all three.

Here are the three lessons that stayed with me long after the credits rolled — lessons I believe are worth carrying into your work, your relationships, and your daily choices.

LESSON 1:  PREJUDGING KILLS POSSIBILITY BEFORE IT EVEN BEGINS

There is a quiet arrogance in thinking we already know what something — or someone — is worth before we have truly engaged with it. I did it with this film. Many of us do it every day.

We dismiss the opportunity because the timing seems inconvenient. We dismiss the person because their background does not match our expectations. We dismiss the idea because it does not arrive in the format we were hoping for. And in doing so, we close doors that we never actually opened.

Chris Gardner’s story begins with people doing exactly this to him. Doors close. Phones go unanswered. Polished offices turn him away. But Gardner himself never prejudges his own capacity. He keeps walking into rooms where he is not expected to succeed — and that refusal to accept a predetermined verdict is itself a form of wisdom.

“The verdict you accept about yourself becomes the ceiling you live under.”

The practical takeaway is direct: before you dismiss something — an idea, a path, an unlikely source of help — ask yourself whether your reaction is based on genuine evaluation or simply on the discomfort of the unfamiliar. One of those responses is discernment. The other is mere habit dressed up as judgment.

LESSON 2:  STRUGGLE IS NOT A SIGN YOU ARE ON THE WRONG PATH

This is perhaps the most counter-intuitive lesson the film delivers — and the one most needed in a culture that treats difficulty as a warning signal rather than a navigational reality.

Gardner does not descend into hardship because he has made foolish choices. He descends into hardship while pursuing something legitimate and necessary. His wife leaves. He loses his apartment. He sleeps in a subway station bathroom with his young son, holding the door shut through the night. This is not the narrative arc of a man who has gone wrong. This is the narrative arc of a man who is going through.

There is a critical distinction between the two, and it matters enormously for how we interpret the difficulties in our own lives.

Hard seasons are not always corrective. Sometimes they are developmental. The pressure is not meant to redirect you away from your calling — it is meant to build the capacity you will need when you arrive there. The temptation, when things become genuinely difficult, is to read the difficulty as a signal to stop. Gardner never reads it that way.

“Not every storm is a detour. Some storms are the road itself.”

Ask yourself this: are you walking away from something because you have genuinely discerned it is wrong, or because it is simply harder than you expected? The answer shapes everything that follows.

LESSON 3:  THE GAP IS CROSSED ONLY BY SHOWING UP — DAILY, WITHOUT APPLAUSE

The most durable lesson the film teaches is the least glamorous one. It is not about talent. It is not about luck, timing, or a single defining breakthrough moment. It is about the unglamorous, unwitnessed, unrewarded discipline of showing up — fully and consistently — when no one is watching and no one is clapping.

Gardner’s internship at Dean Witter is unpaid. He earns nothing. He must complete the full day’s work in fewer hours than his peers because he has to collect his son from daycare, navigate shelter systems, and meet basic survival needs that his colleagues never have to think about. And yet he outperforms them. Not because he is exceptional in the conventional sense. But because he builds a system of disciplined daily action and refuses to deviate from it regardless of his circumstances.

This is the part of success stories that rarely makes the poster. The gap between where you currently are and where you are trying to go is not bridged by a single dramatic gesture. It is bridged by the accumulation of ordinary days, handled with extraordinary commitment.

“Nobody sees the 5 a.m. work. Everyone sees the outcome. Do the 5 a.m. work anyway.”

The practical implication is simple but demanding: identify the one or two daily disciplines that, if performed consistently over time, will move you toward what matters most — and then protect those disciplines as though your future depends on them. Because it does.

A Final Word

I almost never watched this film. I had already decided what it was before I gave it a chance — and in doing so, I nearly missed three lessons that genuinely changed the way I think about resilience, hardship, and the quiet discipline of daily work.

That, in itself, is perhaps the fourth lesson: sometimes the thing that challenges you most arrives in the packaging you are most inclined to reject.

Do not be too quick to close the door.

OVER TO YOU

Reflect on these questions and share your thoughts in the comments:

1. Is there a film, book, or experience you almost dismissed — and are you glad you didn’t? What did it teach you?

2. Which of these three lessons resonates most strongly with where you are right now — and why?

3. What is one daily discipline you could more consistently, starting this week?

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Written in response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt — 24 May 2026.

Johnbritto Kurusumuthu

Founder & Principal Author

RISE & INSPIRE

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