Stuck in an Elevator

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the one’s who never yawn or say a common place things, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
–Jack Kerouac


We were running for the elevator at the MGM in Las Vegas. The door closed before we could get on so we waited for the next ride. In only seconds the elevator opened, with the same people who had entered the elevator before us still standing there. Evidently they were in a deep trance because it hadn’t occurred to them that they had not moved.

We looked at each other and, just for fun, silently agreed to stand there and see what these people did. The door closed again and in seconds reopened. They still didn’t notice that they had not moved. They also hadn’t noticed that they needed a special key to use this particular elevator, as it went to the Penthouse.

Just before the doors closed a third time, I caught the door with my foot and stood there, staring at these five people: my friend asked, “Hey, do you realize you have yet to leave the first floor…that the elevator hasn’t moved?” They looked bewildered and asked us if we knew why this was. “You didn’t notice that this elevator was only for people going to the Penthouse?” They turned red with embarrassment and ran out of the elevator.

Not only had they not moved they didn’t know they hadn’t moved. And they certainly didn’t know that they were on an elevator that was not going to take them where they wished to go.

As I went up the elevator I thought about these people and how they acted like so many others I have seen driving in traffic or walking through malls. They are numb to their surroundings, dead to the fact that they aren’t really going anywhere and, although their eyes are open, they are blind to what is happening all around them.

Many of us can identify with such people for we too once walked through life unknowingly. For more years than we care to remember, we stood in an elevator and watched the doors opening and closing and didn’t even know we weren’t going anywhere. We relived the same day over, and over, and over again. Then something happened that woke us and we realized that there had to be more to life than watching doors opening and closing.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2010