Up on the roof

I had a very interesting dream last night, and when it opened up, I was at the top of a very high tower with some sort of acquaintance. Though the guy and I didn’t know each other well, we were stuck in the same predicament. Both he and I needed to get down from the tower, which was about 50 feet off the ground. A ladder was attached to the tower, but unfortunately it ended 30 feet above the ground. The guy, who was heavyset, gave me instructions on how best to descend the tower. First, he said, I should take off my shoes and place them on the ledge. Then, when going down the ladder, I should keep my eyes straight ahead of me and at no point look down.

I was skeptical. Below us were several people with whom this guy and I were friendly. They were telling us that we had to come down, that we had no other choice, and that we should stop being afraid. After all, they said, they had come down the same way. But this guy and I were hesitant. Finally, the guy decided to go. He followed his own advice and for a while it all seemed to work. But then, after he had gotten down as far as he could on the ladder and had jumped -- I guess that had been his strategy: to jump the rest of the way, even though it was a major drop -- he landed on a surface that had looked like earth but was actually ice, and sank.

Obviously, this didn’t make me more enthusiastic about jumping or following the guy’s advice. I had thought that I was trapped and I really didn’t know what to do. Then, I noticed that there was a building next to the tower. I noticed that if I was careful, I could climb from the tower onto the building via the roof of a doorman booth, which for some reason was wedged between both structures. 

I worked up the nerve to climb over the small roof and was successful. From the building's roof now, I looked down on my friends and laughed at them “See!” I said. “You don’t have to do it the way you guys said I should. I did it my own way and it was perfect!"  For some reason, though, I had to go back to the platform of the tower. I had left some important papers on it or something. I was very unenthusiastic about this because I had just reached safety. But in the dream I felt it was my duty to go back. Luckily for me, my friend Kaivan was there -- he was one of the friends who had been waiting for me below -- and he did just want a good friend would in such a situation. He came up onto the roof where I was and told me that he would accompany me back onto the tower.