Life as a staircase

3 March 2006

One day, at university, I found myself sitting on a staircase watching people walk up and down the staircases and started to think about how staircases can represent life. Life in a metaphorical sense, is a staircase. There are many types of staircases- short ones leading from a path to a front door and the long ones which go up so many levels. At my university, the staircases were long and by the time I reached the top I found myself sweating and gasping for air. I sat in the middle of it, with a view of the whole staircase.

Have you ever looked at an university with all of its stairs and levels? Concrete to some people, it’s more than that to me- it represents the levels of life. It is the morning after I saw a bad accident, with smashed cars and a dead man lying on the road - something my eyes don’t like to see. I feel so down, haunted by that very sight. It gets me thinking about life, the levels of life and death.

When we are born, we start at the lowest floor and we look up at the roof with the many levels that eventually reach it- a ‘life long’ procedure. Each step is growth, going from childhood to teenagers to adulthood. Each level represents an age of life.

Sometimes people run up the stairs, growing to quickly for our own age. Sometimes people walk up the stairs slowly as if weights were tied to their ankles. Life is too hard and daunting for them. Sometimes people sit and think at the top of the staircase, trying to figure out whether to go down a level and more backwards and some think whether to go forward and up a level. That is where I am sitting now. Smack bam in the middle!

The roof or top level represents death, as there are no stairs beyond the roof to walk. This stage is old age, signifying death.

Sometimes people trip and fall down the stairs, at any age or level. This represents when a person dies before their time to before they reach old age (like the person in the accident). Some people, on the other hand, get tired and can not take walking or ‘life’ and therefore jump off the staircase and lie dead on the first floor. This is suicide.

Some people run up the stairs, this shows that they love life and are energetic about life. Whilst others lug themselves up the stairs as they are drained from life.

The question is: How do you go up the stairs? Do you run or walk?
What level are you at now?
Are you going to move forward or backwards?