THE QUOTIDIAN STRUGGLE

“Amazing to think, truly, how dark it gets in a place like this.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s not something you really think about. Not until the power goes out, at least.”

“I must confess a slight fascination with elevators. Grew up in an insignificant little hamlet, you see. No building over three stories in the entire town, I’d wager.”

“Delightful.”

“Didn’t ride in my first elevator until after I’d moved away…moved away from my brood and taken a bride at the ripe age of nineteen.”

“Hm. Fascinating.”

“Ah. Apologies. I find myself doing that, you know. Slipping into tales from the past. Though, sometimes all we have of a singular someone are the memories. And those remembrances—persistent buggers that they are—tend to drop in at unexpected moments.”

“Sure. It’s no problem, I guess.”

“Well, listen to me prattle on. I have to assume this isn’t where you expected to find yourself at 3:15 on a Tuesday afternoon.”

“Right. You can’t see me right now, but know I’m nodding slowly in agreement.”

“After settling into the city, I once worked as an elevator operator, you know.”

“You don’t say.”

“How did I find the job? Well, it had its ups and downs.”

“Brilliant.”

“Oh, I take no offense. My lovely wife held my jokes in similar esteem.”

“A true knee-slapper, that one.”

“Merely hoping to lighten the mood. This predicament ever happen to you in the past, madam?”

“Never been trapped in an elevator before, no.”

“Oh, don’t use a word like that. Trapped. So…defeatist.”

“Huh. You have a better one?”

“Temporarily…inconvenienced. Yes. A brief lapse in our everyday life of modern comforts. A transitory state of discommode.”

“You do this often?”

“By ‘this,’ you mean…”

“Police how others speak?”

“Ah. Deepest apologies. I’m an English professor at the university, you see. Words are my currency, madam.”

“Right.”

“I’d like to think I carry some burden upon my metaphorical shoulders, upholding the proper use of the vernacular.”

“Yeah. Please know I’m saluting you right now. Thank you, sir, for your service.”

“Gloriously acerbic, I assure you, but please understand I had a sincere motive in ‘policing’ you. Defeatist, negative thinking is something I view as a modern day blight. Understand, I was once like you, Miss…”

“Miss Doesn’t Give My Name Out to Strangers, sir. Honor to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh, charmed. But I fear your waggish façade hides a cold heart. One that’s grown far too cynical for such a young age.”

“Yeah, that’s cute.”

“May I ask what I said that’s so amused you?”

“Hey, no offense, but do you really think there’s a difference between a cynic and a realist in today’s world?”

“See, madam, every cynic in every age viewed himself as a realist. And I was once one of them. I looked at the world outside the window; saw the graft, the abuses of power, the quotidian struggle to escape an ever-accelerating hamster wheel of tedium.”

“Us less enlightened folks call it the daily grind.”

“And was it even less of a grind for a serf, toiling away at his fields in medieval Europe? The quarry workers and masons who constructed the pyramids? Do you think a peasant fisherman boarding his humble boat every daybreak never had these thoughts, watching the sunrise reflect on the waters of the Katsura?”

“And that should cheer me up?”

“Do you doubt they would trade their most valued possession to live as we do? For the largest struggle of their day to be a temporary disruption in a convenience once undreamed of?”

“Right. I should be thrilled when something that’s supposed to work…doesn’t.”

“Perhaps you should find gratitude that it exists at all?”

“Sure. So you had this epiphany one day and it just changed your entire way of thinking?”

“Oh, these are sentiments I would hear with some regularity, being married to the Department of History’s senior professor. She’d offer a wider perspective to temper my rantings over broken springs on toasters and loose rearview mirrors on Buicks. And, perhaps for a few brief moments, I appreciated the wisdom.”

“But that ‘quotidian struggle’ continued, huh?”

“An effort was made to concede her point. But I carried with me a dull knowledge that carpets always need cleaning, that dogs always require walking.”

“Well, if you’d taken care of that second one first, maybe the carpet could’ve stayed clean.”

“Ha! Fair enough. But, yes, her words carried much truth, though were perhaps too…abstract to fight against the prosaic disappointments of the day. Yes, intellectually, I was aware my concerns pale in the face of a migrant worker uncertain if his family will go to bed hungry again tonight. But, in the moment, when the lid lackadaisically attached to my morning premium roast by an indifferent drive-thru employee slips free, and my unsuspecting lap is greeted with fresh coffee….keeping a heart filled with gratitude was difficult.”

“If only you had a stranger hovering over you, lecturing you not to submit to those dark thoughts.”

“The darkness is always there, miss. But, years ago, I began to appreciate it was merely a shadow. And shadows can’t exist without light. Something I realized far later than my fair spouse would’ve preferred. The last thing we spoke of. A moment forever etched in memory. See, it was the final day she—”

“Uh, listen, I appreciate you killing the time, but I’m not sure if this is something I really need to hear.”

“Hah! Oh, excuse me for laughing, but is there a puritanical side hiding behind this cynical exterior?”

“…what?”

“Divorce, dearest. I would’ve assumed any taboo surrounding the topic disappeared after the Gipper won the presidency.”

“Ah, I…what?”

“Our last argument, miss. My lovely was quite frustrated with my demeanor. Told me she couldn’t find happiness with a man unwilling to appreciate the beauty of a spring day. One prone to wallow in the petty vexations of long bank lines and unresponsive television remotes. Well, more accurately, she stated she was sick of my ‘piss-pot attitude’ and ‘perpetual kvetching over some stupid nonsense or the other.’”

“Oh. Harsh.”

“Perhaps it’s my own form of contrarianism. My attempt to prove her wrong, you see. If only to prove I could, I sought the larger perspective she was so fond of championing—trained myself to appreciate, say, the utility and comfort my Oxfords had provided for only a fraction of my daily income. The complicated production and supply chain, developed over the course of decades, which existed solely to offer me goods at a reasonable price.”

“Yeah. Gotta love those supply chains.”

“Yes, yes. The soles wore thin far sooner than I would’ve liked, and I found myself wasting much of my lunch hour at the nearest department store looking for a new pair. My exact size was out of stock, so I had to settle for another brand. Some clueless oaf preoccupied with their phone attempted to cut in line. And the teenage clerk carried the stink of cannabis on her clothing, refusing any eye contact as she swiped my card and slapped my purchase into the bag.”

“Oh, but I’m sure it didn’t get you down.”

“Merely a part of learning the lesson. Learning to appreciate the beauteous song of a wood thrush perched upon a blossoming cherry tree…even as I’m walking past a boor too indolent to clean up after the mutt attached to his leash. Appreciating the padding of my feet against the pavement, in these final years of my scrawny limbs remaining ambulatory.”

“She’d be proud of her ex, I bet.”

“I’d like to think so. Embarrassing to think how long I lived in the dark, even as I had someone prodding me to see the light. She’s moved on now. Started a new life with a motivational speaker, I’ve heard. Me? I pay homage to my estranged sweetie in my own way.”

“Passing on the wisdom, huh?”

“Well, a peculiar distribution of electricity in this building helps. I’d discovered it one day while visiting a podiatrist on the fourth floor. Every Tuesday at 3:15 this lift goes dark for precisely six minutes.”

“Ah, and then, suddenly the lights go back on.”

“Too obvious a metaphor?”

“Nah, subtlety’s overrated, I say. There’s one small facet of daily life—something I’ve overlooked for so long—you’ve helped me to appreciate.”

“Really?”

“One thing I’ll cherish for the rest of my life, I’ve gotta say.”

“Splendid! Might I ask what this is?”

“Just the greatest unacknowledged gift of them all…”

Ding.

“…solo elevator rides.”