Oh my God, FINALLY

I cannot believe this has finally happened. When I noticed, I actually didn't believe it, and I spent several minutes running up and down the stairs of my apartment to verify that this had indeed happened.

See, because a lot of times a stairwell in a house or apartment will be lit. You'll have one light, often at the top of the stairs, but there will be a light switch at the bottom and a light switch at the top so that you can have the light when going up or down and then switch it right off when you reach your destination. But the light switches are always set up in such a way that you can never have both light switches off and have the light off. You could have both light switches on and the light on, but never both off and the light off.

This has been bugging me for years. I mean years. I never see this set-up without being deeply annoyed by it. Because the light switches and the light can match, right? But they can only match while the light is in play. During its rest time, i.e., the way it is most of the time, one of the light switches is out of sync with the status of the light. It. Drives. Me. Crazy.

But today, I had to run downstairs to get a film, and I switched the staircase light on at the top of the stairs - I switched the switch on (up). I got to the bottom of the stairs and turned the switch to the up position which turned off the staircase light (at this point both switches were at up and the light was off). I fetched my movie and went back to the staircase and switched the downstairs switch to the down position, which turned on the staircase light, and I had made it halfway up the stairs before the full significance of this dawned on me.

I had just set the downstairs switch to the off position. When I came downstairs first, I had turned the upstairs switch to the on position. This meant that when I got upstairs and turned the upstairs switch to the off position, BOTH SWITCHES WOULD BE AT OFF AND THE LIGHTS WOULD BE OFF.

THEY MATCH.

THEY MATCH THEY MATCH THEY MATCH THEY MATCH.

I was so happy. I felt like The Gods were sending me a sign that this apartment is indeed the right apartment from me (as if I didn't know). I felt this so strongly that I would have built a fire and offered up an animal sacrifice right there if I hadn't gotten distracted by the monster of uncertainty and had to run downstairs and upstairs and downstairs and upstairs to check that I wasn't imagining it.

What bothers me is that I view lights (and light switches) as being in play or out of play. If a light's on, it's in play, it's like doing battle, it's not rest time for the light, you know? And if a switch is flipped to the ON position, it's in play. Not resting. Stressed and unhappy. In most houses, the staircase switches never get a rest. One of them is constantly in play unless the light is on. In my house, there is peace at the switches when there is peace at the light. It's holistic staircase rest, peace, and happiness.

This is such a crazy post I almost didn't post it. But I have to. Because you just have no idea how long this has been an issue for me, and I always wondered why the light switch people did it that way, when the other way (my apartment's way) was clearly better and more unified.