An Elevator Experience

For some time alone, after being bombarded with all the ineptitude, bureaucracy, and clamor of the medical world in two hospitals in two days with two brothers-in-law, I entered the quiet solitude of an elevator. Its quiet, limited and closed space was a welcome retreat from the over-stimulation of the world outside its confines.

Its walls appeared to be teak, with bronze borders framing each panel. Its ceiling contained recessed lighting giving the impression of the celestial ceiling of a clear starlit night. The floor was white and black speckled tile with white being the predominant color by far. In the center of the floor were four tiles of green marble with no discernible pattern but rather an infinite array of possibilities. They were of utmost significance to the feeling and appearance of the solitude I felt once inside the closed doors of my temporary protective womb.

As the doors closed, I gave a sigh of relief which was immediately swallowed up by the quiet and stillness within my private space. It occurred to me how extremely pleasant was the solitude this elevator could provide rather than simply transferring me between my duties of checking on my husband's well being while waiting in the van parked right outside the building and my duty of assisting my sister in the discharge of her husband from the hospital up on the fourth floor. Where before I had simply used this elevator as a means to go from one duty to another, this time I was encapsulated in it and used it as a kind of cosmic chapel; a place of spiritual respite.

I simply stood there leaning against the bronze railing and became one with the stillness. I pushed no buttons once the doors closed. I simply remained where I was, safely protected from the demands of everyday life; a withdrawal from life and yet an entrance into real life; the life within. The elevator took me to a floor not designated by any of the selections displayed on its panel of floor numbers.

I went to a quiet, calm, solitude of wonderful aloneness further augmented by the four tiles of infinite patterns of design. For a brief, wonderful moment, I stepped outside myself and entered into a peace beyond understanding. It was as though I left my body resting on the railing and my essential self entered into the infinite, seeping through the design of the tiles on the floor, out of this world into the infinite. It was an ecstatic moment, leaving me utterly rested and peaceful as the elevator doors opened, people entered, and I returned to my everyday life situation.

I will never view elevators quite the same again. They can be more than simply floor changing machines. They can propel me inwardly to my essential self, to that stillness and peace therein.