The lights below twinkled in the blue-black night like stars. My head spun from giddiness at being so high up, and my stomach seemed to float up to my chest. I grabbed the railing to steady myself, unable to take my eyes off the gorgeously frightening sight below. Maybe I would throw up and some poor person down below would go home a mess.

I felt like I was with God up in heaven. All the lights below and the dark cloud above made it seem as if I was looking down on the stars, but the adrenaline pumping through my body reminded me that it was a terrifyingly long way down. The pounding against my ribs reminded me that I was not God and that I did not belong up here.

When I staggered away from the edge of the platform and looked straight ahead, my head finally stopped swimming. My eyes refocused, and I noticed an old French man in a red cap and scarf had been standing next to me. He wore a leather jacket and faded blue jeans. He seemed to be searching the world that stretched out below us, looking for something in particular – not that he’d find it; he’d need a pair of binoculars for that.

I was just about to turn back to the stairs when he looked up and caught me gazing at him. His serious face relaxed into a smile. He said something in French. I stared at him blankly.

He smiled wider at my confusion. “We are so small,” He said in a heavy French accent. He turned to look at the sky around us. “The world is so big.”

I looked at the lights stretching in every direction. Paris. It was only one city in a very wide world. “Do you come here often?” I ventured to ask after a pause.

He nodded. “Have you been here before?”

I stuck my hands in my pockets to warm them. “No,” I said. “It’s my last night in France, so I thought I should check it out.”

The man nodded. He took out a cigarette and lit it. “I come here all the time,” he said, leaning down on the banister and gazing out over the world again. “I like to remember how small I am.”

“You do?”

The man smiled at me over his shoulder and nodded. “Yes, very much.”

I watched him watch the world for a few moments before he wished me a safe trip home. I thanked him and headed for the stairs.

The walk down, although less strenuous, was more terrifying than the walk up because now I had to train my eyes in the downward direction towards my world. On the climb up, my mind was able to dwell on things above, greater things – greater than myself – now my mind wandered down. I still hadn’t finished packing for my flight the following day. I couldn’t forget my sweater I had left hanging over the shower curtain to dry from the day I’d gotten caught in the rain. I was really hungry. Maybe I should stop for one last French croissant on the way back to the hotel.

For a moment it seemed odd to be thinking of such petty things after seeing how much larger the world was than myself. I half wished I had sat down at the top of the tower and looked out at the world from God’s perspective for hours until I had thought out my life. I half wished that I had seen God step out from the clouds before me and enlighten me to go serve starving children in Africa. I half wished that I’d thought my life out past nine o’clock tomorrow morning, missed my plane, and continued sorting out my life until God smacked some purpose into me. Because up there, in the sky where it looked like I was looking down on the stars, I was reminded of something that, despite my efforts, I had never truly been able to forget.

My life was pretty pointless.

I wanted my life to be meaningful. At least… sometimes I wanted my life to be meaningful. Like in that moment, I could have stopped; I could have turned around. I could have marched back up to the top of the tower (the thought did occur to me). I could have sat down there for hours and hours until the sun rose and went down again until enlightenment came and smacked some sort of significance into my soul and some sort of purpose into my person. I could have thought so hard and so long about things so difficult to grapple with that I when I finally got up I would do something amazing or stupid depending on how you looked at it.

But I didn’t stop. I didn’t go back up the stairs; I just kept walking down.

I considered stopping on the stairs. It wasn’t a bad alternative; this passage way between heaven and earth, kind of like death I surmised, surprising even myself with the morbidity of the thought. It was true, though. If the top was heaven and the bottom was earth the staircase in between had to be death in some sense of the word.

I shook my head. I was letting the writer in me think too metaphorically. This wasn’t a metaphor. This was real life. But I slowed down anyway. For some reason the idea of the staircase as death had intrigued me. I had so many thoughts running through my brain; I needed to sit down and sort through them. If I didn’t, I would either loose them or go crazy.

Although half of me wanted the thoughts to float away, I sat down on the steps. The cold from the metal steps came through my jean shorts. I gazed out from this in-between place, this link between earth and sky. The lights looked much more like my world now. Window lights and streetlights, headlights and stoplights.

I waited.

I didn’t even know what I was waiting for. Yes, I wanted meaning and purpose, but what did they look like? Was I waiting for a booming voice to echo down through the staircase and tell me to get my life together? Or would a bolt of lightning strike the tower and knock some sense into my head? Or would a great wind come and push the tower until it swayed and in fear of death I would finally understand the meaning of life? I became slightly afraid. It was that kind of fear that sits nervously at the bottom of the stomach and is suddenly stirred by the slightest change in circumstances.

I waited still. The cold came through my jean shorts and took over my body. I hugged my knees only to be chilled by the iciness of my own fingers on my leg.

When it came it was nothing like anything I had anticipated. It was quiet but certain, gentle but firm, like a thought, but in a voice far too deep to belong to my own mind. I swear I’m not crazy, but I did not generate the thought that popped into my head in that moment.

Where will you go? What will you do?

Immediately I knew what… it – he – He? – she? – the voice – the generator of the thought had meant. The generator of the thought could tell me to do anything, to go anywhere, but I wouldn’t go. I would go back to my hotel room, turn on the TV, watch some lame romantic comedy while I worked on orchestrating someone else’s life where a character actually would make those kind of choices; a character who was spontaneous and thrill-seeking, who maybe didn’t always stop to think or maybe just didn’t care about the things I cared about. I cared about Dunkin’ Donuts ice coffee, a movie with friends, a new sweater, sweet smelling lotion – and if it was buy one get one free, I was beyond satisfied. My characters were different. They were all like the old French man who liked to remember how big the world was, and they were never satisfied to let it stay the way it was. They were never content.

I stood up (the cold stair was becoming unbearable to sit on) and looked out over Paris.

Maybe I could change. Maybe I could come down from the staircase of death a different person… but change was hard. I knew that. I wrote change. Change was a long process that took one hard choice after another. It took a lot of will power. You had to want change, and I only half wanted it. I still wanted my coffees, my movies, my sweaters, my sweet and easy satisfaction.

I heard footsteps from above and self-consciously fled down the rest of the staircase.

Back at the hotel I turned on a romantic comedy as I packed. I got my favorite sweater out of the bathroom and all the socks that had disappeared under the bed. Setting my alarm, I climbed under the covers and fell asleep just before the guy got the girl.

As the plane lifted off the ground the next morning, I risked the small breakfast I had eaten and peaked out the window. My head and stomach spun as the world grew smaller and smaller. Thoughts from the previous night began to seep into my head, but I pushed them away. Maybe someday I’d rewrite my life to be as interesting and meaningful as some of my characters’, but for now – I pulled out a pen and my notebook – I was content to live vicariously.