Climbing Up A Skyscraper Won't Change My Life, But It Might Be Fun

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I’m excited. Tomorrow, for the second time, I’ll get to test my new tracking system for climbing the stairwell of a nearby building 32 times. I hope to fine-tune the glitches in my fancy, high-tech system — composed of paper clips.

I’m training for the Empire State Building Run-Up Race in a few weeks. The race is up the stairwell of the Empire State Building — yes, that’s a thing — so I’ve been climbing a nearby stairwell to the top, then taking the elevator back to the bottom, on repeat. Tomorrow I’ll try to beat my stairwell record from the other day, which is 2.5 times the number of stairs I’ll do in October in NY.

My fancy new tracking system originated in the mid-19th century when the paper clip was invented. I pin 30 paper clips in six interconnected strands to my shirt. Each time I crest the top floor, I remove a clip and put it in a little bag pinned to my shorts. This is my high-tech tracking system. I’m hoping to figure out a way to remember to remove a clip at the top of each stairwell ascension. Life is unbearable when you can’t remember whether you removed the paper clip.

But despite the fun I’ve been having with this arguably wacky goal, I’m starting to feel a little sad that once October rolls around and the race has come and gone, this odd training regimen in the bowels of a tall, commercial building will no longer be needed. My first tower running race, as it’s called, will be finished and put to bed. The party in my heart will be over. Life will be back to normal.

The stairwell race came about because I wanted some hairy goal that would entice me to continue trudging up the Stairmaster machine at the gym. I have a long history of running races that kept me on my toes and training for 35 years. Running turned into a sport for me and the competition it provided was thrilling and satisfying. When I discovered a sport out there called tower running that involves racing up the stairwells of skyscrapers, it sure sounded sane to me.

Humans love goals, but we tend to think they’re magicians. We think if we can achieve a big goal, life will be transformed forever. This is the expectation — success will be had, celebration will ensue, and life will be such a perfect, happy thing thereafter.

This isn’t what happens.

We tend to assume that with success, we’ll have finally arrived. Our achievement might be a wonderful moment, but it doesn’t single-handedly turn Life into a never-ending cloudless day. Assuming so is referred to as the arrival fallacy — that once we’ve arrived at success, life is a cakewalk. The resulting let-down when we see life has the same meteorology it always had is a shock. How could we feel this way when we were supposed to feel impermeable to disappointment now?

We’re not very good at affective forecasting. This is our less-than-stellar ability to predict how we’ll feel in the future about something. We tend to over or under-predict — life will feel perfect or life will feel tragic. Neither tends to pan out. We might feel strong emotions at certain moments regarding a change in our life — a success or a loss — but we’re also incredibly adaptive to both the good and the bad. We move back to our personal baseline in due time.

This is great news, except for those times when we assume our hairy goal of climbing to the top of a skyscraper — oh, dear — is going to lead to excitement for the ages. It won’t, and I’m aware of this, and thus the sadness over the impending loss of this fun gig I have going with the grungy local stairwell in the building with Starbucks at the top.

I’ll miss the fun run-ins with the facility staff who occasionally appear in the stairwell, too. They’re the ones who comment on the Bruce Springsteen tunes coming from my phone’s speaker that turn the rather dead, unused space into a party for once.

But here’s the big catch, summed up so wisely by my husband. “Why can’t you still climb the stairwell if you want to?”

He’s right. If I embrace the journey to my goals, I’m left with the love that grew for that process long after the goal is reached.

This is what happened with my running and everything else I’ve done. The wins along the way gave birth to the realization that I’d fallen in love with what it took to reach those goals. I simply loved to run. I loved the friendships it garnered, the stunning beauty of the trail, the unparalleled wisdom that came from pushing through hardship. None of that had a thing to do with the hairy goals of any race or accomplishing any particular distance. It was the process.

Goals are good and motivating, but ever since my undergraduate years when a group of my classmates and I were talking with our professor, Jane Rosen, I’ve known that “it’s all about the process.” In that conversation, we young’uns who dreamed of being famous artists were lamenting how hard and precarious that dream seemed. The world was so fickle. One success could easily be followed by failure afterward. You just never knew.

That’s when our wise, beloved teacher, a successful artist who also knew how the art world worked, told us that a happy artistic life is about loving the process of making art, not loving whatever success you attain.

We looked at her in awe, but we already knew she was right. We loved making art.

This is great news because often the journey from goal setting to achievement seems insurmountable. Ugh, we say, that’s too big a mountain. If the process is what it’s all about, then the mountain shrinks on the spot. Soon, we’re climbing the mountain because we like climbing. And look at that! A goat! How cool!

The process is what makes us happy and builds life satisfaction. It gives birth to deeper meaning, educates us, transforms us, builds wisdom, and provides a reason to get up in the morning. The process is a love thing.

So, this is how it will be for me in October when I’ve — hopefully — made it to the top of the Empire State Building’s 1576 steps, taken a few photos, high-fived some strangers at the finish line, and taken the elevator to the ground floor where my oldest son will be waiting to high-five me, too. He’s coming with me to NYC to check this whole scene out. Just spending time with him will be the best part of all this. Wacky, hairy goals have endless hidden gifts.

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Hope you're well, friends.