Elevators Relished and Eschewed

I spent my 20s and 30s living in fourth floor walkups, trudging laboriously up steps and yearning for elevators.

I now live in a fourth floor apartment in a building with an elevator which I ignore, bounding upstairs with a jubilant sensation of health and fitness.


This is an immense reframing. Pursued to its inevitable end (difficult, because we've all been conditioned the other way), it punctures all basis for striving after affluence and luxury.

Even now, at this very late date, it somehow escapes widespread notice that the affluent are rarely happy (even less-noticed: the First World's "poor" are rich by any conceivable standard. Bonus link).