Elevator Music
The prospect of getting stuck on an elevator is probably no one’s idea of a good time, unless maybe accompanied by someone with whom you might get a chance to become a member of that version of The Mile-High Club. For me, getting trapped that way was one of my greatest childhood fears, of which I had many. They also included trains, Saint Bernard dogs, robots, and daddy longlegs. I remember one time sitting on the picnic table in a rest area and feeling what I thought was a daddy longleg crawling on my head and I got hysterical only to find out it was pine needles from the tree overhead.
I don’t know the provenance of all these childhood fears, I can only guess, and I realize I am not unique in having them, especially with respect to being trapped in small spaces. Plenty of viewers reacted in their guts, seeing Uma Thurman trapped in that coffin underground in Kill Bill 2. Many of us can be near panic on a crowded subway, if the conditions are right.
Last week at work I had a chance to revisit all these primal fears, when I was momentarily afraid I was stuck on the small freight elevator we have at work. It’s very slow anyway, and any one reasonably fit could run up to its second floor terminus via the stairs and run back down again and probably upstairs again before the elevator actually stopped. It’s a one floor elevator, which we use to take some of our overstock upstairs.
The door had recently been fussy, requiring someone to sort of push them shut before the elevator would take off. I did that and pressed the down button and I couldn’t feel it moving and all my boyhood fears came back if only for the briefest of moments. I wondered what I would do. The first thing I thought of is where would I pee if I were trapped in here for a long time. I didn’t have my cell phone and I didn’t know if the alarm button would work. I was feeling hot anyway and that made me even edgier. The elevator reached the first floor and the doors opened and it was all fine, but I need to tell you, for a few seconds this GratiDude was right back there as a four or five year old.
Right after it happened, I started to wonder as I often do how any of this might relate to gratitude My first thought was I’m grateful that I’m not afraid of most of those things any more. St. Bernards, check. Trains, check. Robots, check. Daddy longlegs, check. Elevators and subways are sketchier but usually fine.
Then for some reason I had the phrase “freedom from fear” in my head and I was trying to suss out where that was from. It seemed like something patriotic, something about the USA, not at the level of Constitution or Bill of Rights, but it sounded like it. A little research revealed that it was one of the four freedoms FDR talked about in his State of the Union Address in 1941.
No one can guarantee that all people can be free from fear. It was a vision that Roosevelt was holding. I didn’t think about it at the time but it seems relevant on the day we celebrate as the birthday of America. Big vision in the abstract, messiness in the particulars, just like our lives.
Fears like yours or mine aren’t stupid, they’re not trivial, but they are a chance to embrace one’s whole path. As Rumi put it “You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.”
