The Fourth Floor
When I lived in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, my apartment was on the fourth floor of a small building. Each floor had one apartment. The others were one-bedrooms, but mine was a studio with a large, plant-filled patio.
When I was looking at apartments, the one directly below mine was also available. It probably would have been the more practical choice. One less flight of stairs. A separate bedroom.
But I fell in love with that patio. The only problem was those damn stairs.
They were outdoor tile-covered stairs, and the first time I climbed them I thought I was going to die.
It was the middle of the afternoon in September in Playa del Carmen, which meant it was swampy. By the time we got to the top, I was so hot and winded that the landlady went to the store and bought me a cold mineral water while we waited to hear from her daughter about whether they would accept the price I’d offered.
They did.
So I got my plant-filled fourth-floor patio and the apartment for the price I wanted.
And I got the stairs.
When I moved in, the rental agent carried my large suitcase up while I took the smaller suitcase and my backpack. I was going to be there for just shy of six months, so I figured eventually I’d get used to them.
The first few weeks were brutal.
I’d found a coworking space I loved and usually went about four days a week. On the monthly plan I got my own key code, so I started going early to get a good seat. Or, more accurately, “my” seat. 😂
I’d leave around 6:30 am and usually come home around 2:30 or 3:00 pm. On the way home, I’d frequently stop to eat or pick up groceries.
Sometimes I saved the groceries for the weekend because after walking home in the heat, I knew exactly what was still waiting for me.
Those damn stairs.
I didn’t have a washer or dryer, so I took my laundry to the lavandería. They had a minimum price, which meant I usually waited until almost all of my clothes needed cleaning before I took them in.
I had a backpack to carry the laundry. There were days I’d leave the coworking space with my computer and everything else in my backpack, stop to pick up my clean laundry on the way home, and then climb those four flights with two packs on my back.
At first, I had to stop on the second floor. After some weeks, I could make it to the third.
The last section from the third floor to the fourth was open air. That meant when it rained, those tiled stairs were wet. There was also a giant fig tree at the end of my patio, so the stairs were covered in slippery figs and leaves when the figs ripened. (It also brought the bats to my patio, which I learned to LOVE. But I digress.)
And just for fun, there was an extra little set of stairs at the top to actually access my patio that could be tricky even in the best conditions.
Eventually, I could make it all the way to the top without stopping. I thought that meant I was almost there, that I’d be able to climb those stairs without getting winded.
Except I didn’t.
I’d get inside, wipe the ridiculous amount of sweat off my face and neck, turn on the air conditioner, which I didn’t run very often, and collapse onto my bed.
At first, it could take me 30 minutes to recover.
Then it became 15.
Then five.
And eventually, I realized something.
It wasn’t about not getting winded. It was about how long it took me to recover.
I was still breathing hard when I got to the top. I was still sweating. My body still knew it had just hauled itself and whatever was strapped to it up four flights of stairs in tropical heat.
But I was okay after a few minutes.
Eventually, I didn’t even have to lie down anymore. I could stay upright, catch my breath, wipe off the sweat and go on with my day.
I’d been measuring my progress by the wrong thing.
I’d decided success would mean the stairs eventually wouldn’t affect me. Instead, my body showed me that progress could mean they affected me differently.
There were setbacks too.
I got sick twice while I lived there. The first time was a nasty sinus infection. It took about a week after I recovered before I could climb the stairs the way I had before.
Then I got dengue fever. While living alone on the fourth floor.
That took me out.
My body was so depleted that it was weeks before I could get up and down those stairs with anything resembling ease.
The stairs hadn’t changed. And everything I’d built before I got sick hadn’t disappeared.
My circumstances had changed.
So my expectations needed to change with them.
I learned something living in Mexico that I hadn’t expected to learn.
I went there intentionally trying not to have expectations about the environment or the people. I wanted to experience Mexico as it was rather than constantly compare it to what I thought it should be.
But apparently, I hadn’t extended that grace to myself.
It took the stairs to the fourth floor to teach me to give myself the same grace. To go with the flow. To stop forcing. To respond to the body, energy and capacity I actually had instead of measuring myself against the capacity I thought I should have.
And going with the flow didn’t mean I stopped climbing the stairs.
I still went to the coworking space. I still bought groceries. I still hauled my clothes back and forth to the lavandería. I still climbed four flights to get home to the apartment and patio I’d chosen.
Grace wasn’t giving up. It was dropping the demand that every climb prove something about me.
I’ve been thinking about those stairs again lately because I’ve caught myself measuring progress the same way.
After everything I’ve worked through, shouldn’t certain things be easier by now? Shouldn’t I be less affected?
Shouldn’t I be able to move through the emotional, psychological and spiritual stuff life puts in front of me without getting so winded? Especially after all the work I’ve done?
And then this last damn eclipse season threw me in the pit, buried me alive and resurrected me.
I temporarily reverted back to the wrong measurement. Once I caught myself, I remembered what those stairs had already taught me.
Growth doesn’t mean hard things stop being hard. Healing doesn’t mean nothing knocks the wind out of me anymore.
My capacity isn’t measured by whether I get tired, overwhelmed, hurt, disappointed or depleted.
The better question for me is:
How do I recover now?
Do I recognize what’s happening sooner? Do I know what I need?
Can I give myself “five minutes” instead of judging myself for needing them? Can I give myself the space to process things?
Can I recognize when I’ve essentially had the emotional equivalent of dengue fever and stop expecting myself to climb the stairs at the same pace I could before?
And can I let a setback be a setback without turning it into evidence that I’ve somehow gone backward?
Because I haven’t. I’m simply winded.
There’s a difference.
I’m also realizing that I don’t want a life in which nothing ever winds me. I want a life with fourth-floor patios worth climbing to.
There will probably always be stairs.
There will be things I want badly enough to carry the groceries, the laundry, the laptop and whatever else life has strapped to my back to get there.
There will be seasons when I can make it all the way up without stopping.
There will be seasons when I need to stop on the second floor.
And there may be times when something knocks me flat and I have to rebuild my strength one flight at a time.
None of that tells me whether I’m succeeding.
Somewhere in those months of climbing four flights of stairs in Playa del Carmen, I learned a better way to measure my progress.
I don’t have to reach the fourth floor without getting winded.
I just have to know how to give myself what I need when I get there.
And if you recognize yourself somewhere in this, maybe you’ve been measuring your progress by the wrong thing too.
Sometimes the shift isn’t about pushing harder or trying to get back to where you were. It’s understanding where you are now, what you need, and what progress actually looks like from here.
If that’s where you are, a Next Chapter Session gives us the space to look at what’s changing, what you need now, and what moving forward can actually look like for you.
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The Fourth Floor
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