Friday At Work: An Allegory?

I have a great job with High Point [Travel]. Our office is located in the "Hotels.com" building on Central Expressway in Big D:

The only bad part about working on the first floor of the Hotels.com building is: there is no restroom on the first floor. However, for me, this is not necessarily a negative because it means whenever I need to do a little "5–4–2" I get to explore the building—there are accessible restrooms on the 2nd, 5th and 10th floors. Depending on my workload for the day, the length of my break, and the urgency to go, I will sometimes go random floors to use the restroom—not only does each floor have a unique look in the Hotels.com Building, but also each bathroom has unique fixtures and layouts. So I like to mix it up from time to time. 

Anyway, on Friday I needed to take a little "5–4–2," and decided to go up to the 10th floor, for it had been a little while since I'd been up there. On my way back downstairs, I decided to get some exercise and go down the stairs. Yeah, 10 flights of stairs, I'm big time. And always, always, always when I'm in one of those large stairwells I love to be a little kid and look down, between the stairs, all the way to ground floor; and then I love to look up, and see how far up I can see. Well, that's all great. But when I looked up—from the 10th floor landing upward to the 16th—into a space that should have been dark and hidden, instead I saw an odd, bright light coming from above (Ps 113:4–6).

I had no idea what this light could be, so I started to ascend the stairs. As I grew closer to the top flights, the light was bright enough to cast my shadow down onto the floors below me. It really was quite interesting. As I reached the 16th floor, I realized that the light was the sun. There was a massive door in the ceiling that went out onto the roof of our building. And it was wide open. A steel ladder was bolted to the wall, which I assumed was used for mechanical purposes if for some reason there was a need to get onto the roof. Well I definitely had a need.

To see this ladder ascending into the sky, and the door to the roof wide-open, let's just say I got a little excited. It was like a dream come true. Slowly and quietly I worked my way up to the roof, then stuck my head out to look around and see if there were any workers out there that might yell at me... people always yell at me when I do stuff like this. But I didn't see anyone... so I jumped out onto the roof.

The first thing I noticed was the wind—which just about blew me back into the hole I had climbed out of and down 16 flights of stairs. And the second thing I noticed was the brick wall, probably 7 feet high that obstructed my view in all directions. So I danced around for a minute, then used a little beat-up wooden ladder that was randomly lain in the corner of the roof to prop myself up on the wall. 

Here's the view to the north, looking up Central Expressway toward the intersection with I–635:

It was awesome just sitting up there. Heights have never really scared me too much, and really , the only thing that scared me was the possibility of someone seeing me and calling the Police thinking I was going to jump.

Here is the view to the South West, toward my Beloved's place of work. Deonna works in the Preston Tower on Northwest Highway. It's the building in the center of the picture, just across the street from the Park Cities Baptist Church:

I kept waving for my Beloved to see me, but I think that she never saw me and that my bubbly motions were only attracting more looks from the people passing on Central Expressway below, fumbling for their cell phones to dial 9–1–1 to report a jumper. 

Here is a little lot to the South East corner of our Hotels.com building, just behind Circuit City:

And below is the view of downtown Dallas. It actually looks more hazy than it did in actuality. It also looks very far away. I guess it is about 10 miles from my work to downtown. On the horizon, about halfway between the buildings of downtown and the edge of the picture to the left, you can see the rectangular building just next to my school, Dallas Theological Seminary.

This picture is looking due South from the building. Traffic doesn't look too bad on Central Expressway.

And here is my final, and favorite picture. I actually sat up on the corner of the Hotels.com building and leaned over to take this one. At first I was scared for my camera—an awesome new Samsung S85 that my wife bought me for Easter—I thought that it might slip out of my hands and smash that little white Honda below. But then I started to get a little scared for myself.

I don't know if everyone has experienced it, or if it's just a portion of the population, but have you you ever been in a situation where you know that you could be really close to death? I'd have to say that the moments like that in my life I could probably count on one (...well, maybe two) hand. I have experienced moments—whether it be climbing up a cliff in Estes Park with my old friend Burns, or skiing off "Million Dollar Rock" in Steamboat, or diving under a black dock in some swampy lake, or this, sitting on the edge of a 16-Story building in Dallas, TX—in which I say to myself, "you know Kyle, the possibility of your death is very close; if you just lean forward a little more (or move your arm a little more to the left, or duck down too low, etc.), you will fall off this building and die." 

This experience—not the experience of death, but the experience of realizing the reality of my mortality—is a revelation. First, it makes me think about me... and about how I will die at some point. Second, it opens my eyes to the fact that I AM ALIVE. Me. Kyle Reed. I have life, and I decide what to do with it (as ol' Gandalf says in The Fellowship, "all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."). 

This is such an important realization because we live in a fallen world. Our actions do have eternal weight. And I hope that we don't ever get caught up thinking that our life is for us, for our pleasure, and I hope that we don't ever get sucked up in habits and patterns. We need to have fresh experiences, and fresh days. 

I am thankful that yesterday afternoon I broke from a little of my life's many habits and decided to go to the 10th floor during my restroom break. I am thankful that I decided to take the stairs back down—even though it was 10 flights—and I am thankful that I decided to jovially explore the stairwell, and look up, into the bright light from above.