Tuesday 4/2/24
The other day I was at the Harvard T stop, making my way up to the street. You come through the turnstile, and there's a flight of stairs with an elevator adjacent to it. At the top there's a platform and you lean ever-so-slightly to the right and there's another set of stairs with a second adjacent escalator.
I'm looking at all of these able-bodied people electing for the escalator each time, rather than walk up a combined two sets of stairs, with what you could even call a break in the middle.
It just speaks to how lazy people are. How fat-assed they are in an internal way. I just don't mean that Americans are fat--they are fat. Many of these people were not, though. It's an attitude thing.
If you give someone a choice to be lazier, even if opting for that choice is less good for them physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, romantically, psychologically, they'll probably take it without a second thought. Without any thought. As part of their programming.
I don't know--I'd feel pathetic--like shit about myself--if I could walk up a flight of stairs and instead said, "Nah, I'm bailing on this, I'm so fucking lazy I'm going to get some help so I don't have to be the only thing moving me along."
Think of how lazy you have to be to want to spare yourself walking up a flight of stairs. This isn't some small thing. I know someone wants to say that to me. It actually says a lot about a person and I am certain it says a lot about who they are and how they approach the rest of their life. We're not just one person here and another person there. We're often some version of the same thing and attitudes and approaches smeared across the board of life.
I've mentioned this before, but clearly all of those stairs you don't take in your life would have added up to something positive if you took them. I was reading some study and it said something like people who walk five flights of stairs a day are some significant percentage less likely to die of heart failure in their lives. Five flights are nothing. Or it might have been three. I don't recall.
I think it's arrogant, too. You have your health right now (allowing that you do--if you don't, then you take the escalator, and I hope you feel better soon). Respect it. Don't take it for granted. Don't be a lazy dog. What message do you send to yourself when you essentially go, "Damn, there are some stairs, I'm not going to tackle those, no way, oh, look, this thing can give me a ride like I'm a hundred and fucking eight, although I'm thirty-four."
