Recently I was out of town on business for a whole week. I was staying in a hotel, and before long I felt like I knew the place inside and out.
On the fourth day of my stay, I got up early and went in search of coffee. The elevator door opened, and three things happened, in quick succession.
First, there was a man already on the elevator. I had thought, all week, that I was on the top floor, so I was very surprised to see him there. I stepped in and said something brilliant like, “Oh! I didn’t realize this hotel had a higher floor!” Very polite, he responded, “Yep, six floors.”
Then the doors closed, and we were plunged into total darkness. I observed, “It’s really…dark!” (Did I mention I had gone in search of coffee? I was not at my sharpest.) The nice man agreed that it was, in fact, very dark.
About two seconds later, I had my third realization, which was that it was really hot in the elevator. “And it’s hot!” I could not help but say. He agreed, again, that it was hot, and offered that he suspected there was something wrong with the power in the elevator.
We arrived in the lobby, I got my coffee, and the man informed the front desk clerk that the elevator was dark and hot.
On my solo ride back up to the fifth (but not top) floor, I thought about my assumptions that had been in play when I pushed the down button to call the elevator. I had assumed I was on the top floor, which even a cursory glance at the panel in the elevator on any of my trips would have told me was wrong. I was so thrown by the guy being on the elevator that it had taken me a few seconds to even notice the darkness he was standing in, and my brain was still catching up from that when I realized it was hot.
The second two things happened because of the first one. My mistake about the floors in the hotel set me up for a domino effect of goofiness.
This time, my mistake was no big deal, and it made a funny story later in the day when I saw my colleagues. But my complete conviction that the hotel had five floors has been on my mind. What else have I failed to observe? What other, more consequential, assumptions am I walking around with? And most of all, how can I bring my curiosity and engagement more fully to the people and places around me?
