86 Steps

Cold Korean mornings when I was dozing, wrapped in warm comforter, were met with a groan and a struggle.  Eventually, I would leave my apartment and walk to work (less than a mile’s worth of footsteps).  The last stretch of my walk to work is over a pedestrian bridge that crosses a busy four-lane street.  The pedestrian bridge is 5 meters high, blue, and contains 86 steps: 43 up, 43 down.  I don’t mind this walk, the 86 steps included, or the idea of a pedestrian bridge interrupting my “walking flow”; but, occasionally, when the streets are empty or it’s late in the evening, I will jay-walk the street and skip the pedestrian bridge entirely.  It’s illegal, but a lot of people do it; I had one co-worker, Teddy, who never used the pedestrian bridge.  He’d jay-walk in the heaviest of traffic.  He didn’t like the inconvenience of the pedestrian bridge.

I know the pedestrian bridge has 86 steps because I counted during the winter.  The roads, sidewalks, roofs, streets—everything—was icy.  More than once I tumbled to the ground because of walking on the ice and I started to fret over busted ankles and thrown backs.  When the pedestrian bridge got slick it was scary to walk on: the steps were granite, extremely slippery, and I imagined that a fall here would be crippling.  So, I took the pedestrian bridge slow: Calculating every movement, breathing and balancing, and eventually counting the steps I crossed until I reached the other side.  I wanted to know what I was up against—how many potentially ill-trodden steps separated me from work?  The answer was 86.  Every day I had 86 steps that I needed to take before I reached my goal.

On January 2^nd, 2011, I woke up in the late afternoon because I stayed out until 7am for New Years.  I groggily logged onto to Skype to wish my family a Happy New Year, but the New Year started off poorly: On New Year’s Eve, in California, my dad was rushed to the hospital and an MRI revealed that he had a subdural hematoma.  For weeks at work I was dismal and unanimated because I was waiting for my dad to have brain surgery.  Thankfully, relieving the pressure of a subdural hematoma is a “simple operation” for neurologists these days and my dad regained his health.  Today he’s fine.  While I waited for the calm of post-operation good news, I’d mount those 86 steps everyday and walk to work worrying about my dad.  Actually, I couldn’t get the 86 steps out of my head.  I started to think and dream of the 86 steps: I hate walking over the pedestrian bridge, it’s such a struggle, such a pain, I don’t want to do it—but I have to do it!  I figured it out eventually, I was obsessed with the obstacle that the 86 steps embodied.

 Everyone faces their own version of the “86 steps” and I think that’s what made me obsess about it: The “86 steps” idea was applicable to everyone.  Whether it’s the icy walk to work, or brain surgery, obstacles separate us from the goals we seek.  And, regardless of what our aim is, there will always be 86 steps—or something like it—that separate us from the end; it’s how we approach and deal with these impediments.  Sometimes we can bypass what’s in our way because no one’s looking or because “everyone else is doing it—so it’s okay.”  Teddy may have jay-walked every day, but it didn’t remove the pedestrian bridge and he was lucky that he was never hit by a car.  We might cut the corner today, but the 86 steps will be waiting for us tomorrow.

As my dad went through rehabilitation I could only think about the 86 steps that he faced.  I hoped that he patiently took each step of his rehabilitation the way I did during those cold mornings crossing the pedestrian bridge: Calculating every movement, breathing and balancing, and eventually counting the steps he crossed until he reached his goal.  May all my readers do the same as they cross the many pedestrian bridges of life that separate them from their their goals.