Monday last week, a level 7.8 earthquake shook Chengdu, China. Thousands of buildings and homes collapsed. Around 25,000 people are estimated dead. It’s considered a major disaster.

Around 500 miles away, the floor shakes in Xi’an. The earthquake has affected areas as far as that. Both my grandfathers both live there. My mother’s father, the more frail of the two, had to climb down 16 flights of stairs.

Once at the bottom, he was extremely dizzy. Since my 80+ year old grandfather’s daily schedule only involved waking up, sitting in a park, going to sleep, and meals, it was extremely hard on his body to not be able to take the elevator.

He sat in the park for the rest of the day and then stayed in bed for a day. He told us, “Now I think to myself, what was the point of climbing down? I’m old. A few years before I die. What difference does it make if I die know?”

“A lot,” I insisted, “I want to see you!” He grumbled. “I’m an old man,” he told me.

Meanwhile, my dad’s father had felt it too. He was almost an exact opposite of my mother’s dad: not frail at all, taking cold showers and bike rides every day, even though he was 80+ years old. All of his friends asked him how.

But on that Monday, the ground was shaking. My grandfather believed in taking life easy. He walked down the stairs, while everyone else in his apartment building for elderly people ran down the steps.

“What’s the point of running down the stairs?” he said in a phone call a few days after the incident. “If the earthquake is actually in Xi’an, then running won’t help, unless you’re on the first floor. I’m taking my time going down while everyone else gets down first and sprains their ankles or something.”

“If it’s close and big enough, running will only get you further down, where more of my concrete building will fall on you.”

It seems reasonable enough, and I have no reason to doubt him: he used to be a physics professor.

part 2

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