The adjective of the present or the verb of the future

My arch nemesis lives only about 1.5 blocks away from me. It’s a coffee shop door. More specifically, it’s a sign on that door: This is what happens with embarrassing regularity: I am inside, about to step out, my brain reads PUSH from the other side – and so of course, like an idiot, I push the door instead of pulling it. Sure, bad design. But don’t worry, I am not going full Don Norman on you. I wanted to show you this other thing, in Pixelmator Pro: A pretty non-threatening menu, it seems, but sometimes when I see a treatment like this, my brain actually sees this… …and it takes just a bit of extra thinking to figure out where I am and where I’m going. This is one of the recurring boolean problems in UX design. Given a choice, do we show the noun/​adjective of the present, or the verb of the future? Because another way would be to show the current state: To me, this is unambiguous; the state is easy to understand visually without thinking, and the implied flip action also feels…