Most people live in rooms they have to take elevators to get to, and go to at least some classes that they also have to take an elevator to. I don’t. Let me give you a glimpse into my insane little life.

Living on the second floor of a building, I have no need for elevators to access my room- I simply walk up a single flight of stairs to return to my home, and down the same flight to go wherever I need to go. I walk past the elevators, observing the people waiting for them, the maintenance and malfunctions which plague them, but I have no connection to these problems. I have no need for technology more sophisticated beyond my shoes to achieve my aims.

Likewise, my classes all are either only a floor or two up or down from the entrance of their respective buildings, or in Hamilton, that most faithless and accursed of buildings, whose elevator always has a huge fucking line and is really not worth suffering for. I pass up and down the stairways of Mudd, at every floor marveling at the multitudes gathered before its overworked elevators or squeezing into the service elevator like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon.

One wonders why so many choose to take the elevators, when they are so frequently deeply dysfunctional- after all, even the pigeons of Columbia, our fellow citizens, take the stairs instead of flying when they need to hop up or down Low Steps. If beings capable of flight reject it in favor of the civilized promenade along a staircase, who are we to build machines that defy God’s wishes and carry us vertically, with no horizontal motion whatsoever?

Sometimes one wonders, though- is this all there is? Am I doomed to trudge up and down stairs til the end of my days (or the end of the year, which is basically the same thing)? While my impatience is satiated by not having to wait around for elevators, and I appreciate no longer being forced into extremely close quarters with strangers on an hourly basis, a small part of my soul still yearns to feel the invisible rush of sudden vertical motion, to hear the ding of opening doors once more before I leave this world.

Stairs via Pixabay