Going up?

If someone told you to get inside a huge box, wait patiently while they close its lids, shuffle it around, re-open it, and it'll get you closer to where you need to be, would you do it? Well if you said no, think about it the next time you board an elevator. And if you said yes, you obviously weren't paying much attention in primary school when they were teaching you the safety of knowing "stranger danger!" and "you can't touch me there!"

 

I find it a little awkward waiting for elevators to open. It's like I press the 'up' button to call the elevator, but it's still stuck on its current floor. I then go to repeatedly mash the up button, thinking it would make the elevator notice me, but it's like the elevator just replies "Yeah, just wait man! Take a chill-pill while I meet and greet some peeps along the way between where you are and where I am currently at." I don't know why the elevators I imagine are ghetto, but I find them very rude.

Whenever an elevator is opening just as I arrive in the foyer, I immediately jump in. And when I say jump in, I mean I dive at the closing doors with my outstretched arms and retardedly try to pry it open with my finger tips. This causes the people waiting in the foyer to look at me like I'm some sort of crazy man. The person inside the elevator presses the 'open-door' button, but of course they always press it too late, and by the time the elevator opens up again, I've already looked like a zoo's baboon trying to scratch its way into a crate of coconuts. Of course, the doors are designed to open when it senses something between them, but in my mind, I just opened steel doors with my fingers. I'm bloody superman.

At this point, it's too late to ask the elevatoring commuters "is this going up?". I've already swan dived into the damn thing. I have to commit. And with my luck, most of the time the elevator goes in the opposite direction that I want. As it descends, people leave floor by floor, until there's only me and another person left in the elevator as it approaches the last floor. At the very bottom floor, the elevator opens up, and the other person walks out. Knowing it is the only floor left to get off, the guy looks back at me bewildered as to why I'm still in the elevator. All I can do is look back with an expression that says "I screwed up", and feel slightly stupid as the elevator goes back up. I shrug it off, and move on from the awkward situation. Until the elevator returns to the foyer level, and I feel the stares of the people who saw me babooning into the elevator, still inside the very same elevator. I have no idea who these strangers are, but I still feel deeply embarrassed.

This is just my own opinion from too much analysing of things I shouldn't, but I think that people only see themselves either on the way up or on the way down. We are never ever really 'in the moment'. I mean, we all experience 'moments', but upon reflection, we don't treat these experiences as isolated instances.  We compare it to moments that preceded it, moments we expect to come, and all the moments connected to the newly thought up ones. We're either on our way up, where we're looking forward to the promises of having more tomorrow, or on the way down where we're frantically clawing for the possessions of yesterday.

Even the thought of "going up" is still relative. Imagine a building where every floor is progressively better than the one below. We start off at level 5. Where this has been our level of "normal" for as long as we can remember, and all you want is to get higher and make your way to level 7. And then you're allowed to jump to level 8. Of course, you're ecstatic at first to have moved up. You're at a better place than you were yesterday. But over time, level 8 doesn't feel higher anymore. You get use to the surroundings of the 8th floor and eventually it becomes your new 'normal'. And then you're able to go to level 10. Ecstatic at first, but eventually the feeling of normalcy hits. You continually progress higher and higher until you find yourself stuck at a floor that you just can't get above. You're stagnated at the highest point you've ever been so far, but eventually, this becomes your new and only level of 'normal'. And eventually, normal won't be good enough anymore.

If you don't have anything to look forward to, then you'll be stuck. Change is inevitable, and if you can't go up, then, sooner or later, the only way for you would be down. Everyone knows what it's like to be on the way down, it sucks. I think the way to reverse the trend is to have a reason to believe, a promise, or have the hope that tomorrow will be better than your yesterday. I'm not saying that people are always wanting more and are never happy. What I'm saying is that you can be happy, but still want more at the same time. Good enough is should never be what we're aiming for. I think happiness is the continual act of knowing you have something to look forward to.

I've actually had the general concept of this blog entry in my head for the last couple of weeks, but I've never known how to end it to reflect where I stand on this whole "up or down" trend. And if I had written this 2 days ago, or anytime before that, I think I would've ended it on quite a gloomy note. I mean, nothing has really changed, I still feel I've been idle on a floor that I've been wanting to get off of for such a long time, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that I'm gonna be moving up anytime soon. But, for the first time for as long as I can remember, and for absolutely no reason at all, I am hopeful.

=)