The gift of walking
By Lacey Klingensmith
A few months ago, I was inspired by a co-worker who made it a principle to avoid taking the elevator whenever possible.
She always preferred to make the trip up four flights of stairs on foot. When asked why, she liked to joke that she was too poor to afford a gym membership, but what I found most admirable was not her frugal sensibility in choosing to take advantage of the free exercise.
The truly impressive thing was that she consistently denied herself the more comfortable ease of modern convenience, a temptation which few of us accustomed to a pampered lifestyle can resist.
Around the same time, I discovered that some of my other peers actually did belong to a gym located on the fifth floor of a commercial building in our neighborhood. Given their tendency to rely on the less strenuous method of ascension, I wondered if they didn't also take the elevator to get up there, too. To be fair, however, I couldn't say they'd be solely to blame for the decision in a world where the ubiquitous presence of these machines typically overshadows their pedestrian alternative. Stairwells are often hard to find if they are hidden behind doors, or worse, altogether absent from certain exits and entrances of buildings or subway stations.
That withstanding, how can we account for regular circumstances in which we are faced with both choices and generally opt to bypass the stairs? Why we would rather give up a fundamental aspect of human physical movement to let machines become our surrogate legs?
The advent of bipedalism initially set us apart from all other creatures and was one of humanity's original claims to dignity, but sadly we don't seem much interested in cherishing it anymore. How can we find it remarkable when everything ― even the simple act of walking ― has become subject to man's improvement?
It would be unreasonable to assume that most of us consciously revel in deliberate indolence because, truthfully, we rarely even give these choices much thought anymore. They have become second nature to us, seemingly innocent and hardly worth a moment's pause. Situated at the apex of an era now defined by technology, we have been inculcated with an unwavering faith in progress, the goal of which has become enhancing the quality of our lives by eliminating all ``unnecessary" suffering.
Some of these supposed marks of advanced civilization include deodorant and the air conditioner, both of which seek to combat unpleasant bodily odors and the natural function of sweating. Because excessive perspiration is generally now relegated to a reserved time and place during the ``workout," exerting oneself at any other point of the day becomes superfluous.
This perverted rationale which contributes to the abstraction of movement out of the fabric of daily routine is coupled with a uniquely post-modern guilt accompanying technology, and it makes us feel that if there is a faster, more efficient means to achieve a certain end, then we would be foolish or considered old-fashioned for choosing to do something the hard way.
Whatever the cause, the problem of a habit taken for granted is that sometimes it unwittingly assumes an innocence which masks an ugly truth we no longer even realize we're denying. That ugly truth hidden beneath our preference for more comfortable methods of conveyance is a forgotten moral obligation to those who are disabled.
Henry David Thoreau once posed a profound question of empathy: ``Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" If we tried to envision spending our lives in a wheelchair, how might we feel seeing able-bodied strangers relying on machines for movement? Dismayed? Resentful? Perhaps we would want to ask them: Why do people gladly give up the use of their legs as though they were a great burden? Can they not see what a blessing it is to possess the gift of walking?
The writer is working as an English teacher in Seoul and can be lnkling@hotmail.com.