Gatekeeper's Syndrome...

In your life you will encounter many gatekeepers, people invested with a certain amount of power who can grant or refuse you access to something you need or desire. How will you deal with these individuals? The problem with gatekeepers is that they are in a position to needlessly complicate or deflate your life, that is if your life includes any plans to get somewhere or do business with someone of interest.

Let's say for example that you are driving around Big Sur on a busy holiday weekend looking for a place to pitch your tent. You drive in to every campground and you ask the person in the entry booth if there are any sites available. "No," they say. So you move on to the next one. Everywhere is full, or so the gatekeepers say. It's getting late, so you decide to take matters into your own hands. You go back to one of the places where the gatekeeper insisted nothing was available, you bypass the gatekeeper, and of course you find three lovely, empty sites. For whatever reason (their love of rejecting others, misinformation, they didn't like your face) the gatekeeper was not a rational steward of public assistance. They became, in some sense, mythological obstacles that one must charm, outsmart, or bribe. In fact, in several instances on our last trip to Big Sur, bribing jokes were made by campground gatekeepers. Not that they intended to act upon those instincts, but they were fully and playfully aware of the option to squeeze money for favors.

Of course, the film industry is full of all kinds of gatekeepers, as are politics. In both of these arenas, one's power can be measured by their ability to grant or deny access to some one or some thing. So finally, I present for you in one tidy sentence the concept of Gatekeeper's Syndrome: The warping of facts, enactment of private agendas, and irrational value judgments that occur when a human being is put in charge of any point of access.