Elevators again?!

I had a dream a couple nights ago that my family lived in the Eiffel Tower. Apparently the tower was filled with apartments, and ours was on the second floor. It wasn't clear to me, looking back at it, where the tower was supposed to be, because it didn't look like Paris, nor did it look like Southern California. What I especially remember was the elevator.

The elevator was very large, and round, and it had no controls. Instead of choosing the floor you wanted, the elevator just automatically stopped at every single floor on the way up. This was a very strange elevator.

So this is the random bit of information that I wanted to share: I dream a lot about elevators. I don't know why, but somewhere between a quarter and a third of my dreams involve elevators as a significant element. Riding on strange elevators, elevators that malfunction, and sometimes climbing up buildings through empty elevator shafts. A significant portion of my dreams are weird elevator dreams.

I actually have multiple dreams that take place in this hotel that clearly doesn't exist anywhere in real life. It has two elevators, one of which services the first through third floor, and the other servicing the second through seventh floor. The two elevators are at opposite ends of a very long building. Sometimes I dream I'm a guest, sometimes I work at the hotel, and one time I was a paranormal investigator trying to determine if the hotel was haunted. But always, there are these strange and inconvenient elevators that I have to use, because there are no stairs.

I really have no idea why I dream this way. It's not like there's some significant traumatic elevator story from my childhood, or I have any particular waking fascination with elevators. It's just this thing that I really have no explanation for. There are other recurring themes in my dreams, but this is the one that seems the most random.

Racing From Elevators

BTW, as a quick side note that I've been meaning to mention, I remembered the other day that the movie Rat Race has an instance of "running from elevators". At a point somewhere around fifteen minutes into the film, most of the main characters are standing in an elevator lobby near the top of a tall building, waiting for the elevator to come up. One by one, they decide in a panic to take the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator to arrive.

Taking the stairs

There's a phrase that I tend to use that I can't seem to find any reference to anyone else using. I wonder if there's a commonly-used phrase or even just a single word for the phenomenon: "running from elevators".

I use the phrase symbolically when I catch myself or other people behaving in an illogical manner due to the fact that they are impatient. The idea is to imagine a person on the fifth floor of a building who wants to make a hasty exit. He goes to the elevator and presses the button. When the elevator doesn't show up within five seconds, he turns and runs off, looking for the stairwell, thinking, "I don't have time to stand around all day waiting for the elevator!" The fact is, unless the elevator is exceptionally slow, if you're higher than the second or possibly third floor, choosing not to wait for the elevator is very likely going to take longer. So "running from elevators" is engaging in behavior that feels faster and better, but is probably in reality going to take longer and is generally a stupid idea.

(Actually, on December 11th, 1990, I actually decided to take the stairs rather than the elevator, and in rushing down the stairs at a much more rapid pace than is at all advisable, I tripped and sprained my ankle, never making it to my destination at all that day.)

So, I'm sure I had a point here... A couple months ago, I was reading a philosophy book on the problem of evil, i.e., "How could a loving, omnipotent God allow suffering and evil in the world?" It's a good question, and one that most consider to be well-worth pondering. However, one of the philosophers in the collection of essays apparently wanted to make the point that pondering this question is a waste of time for Christians, because while the question does indeed exist, God had intended us to be vessels for change, spending our time combating evil directly through works of charity rather than spending our time trying to solve philosophical conundrums. While I don't completely agree, there's a good point there, too. It led me to think about philosophy and theology in the life of a Christian. I expend an awful large portion of my mental energies pondering philosophical issues, when I suppose I could be using them to solve practical problems of the world.

Yet these philosophical issues are important. People really do want to know why God would allow suffering! I know I do. People really do want to understand how the Trinity works. People really do want to know why the Bible should be given more respect than the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita (or not)! Can a person really ignore those issues? Can one sort out with a clear demarcation which issues are practical issues and which are academic?

One thing that occurred to me in particular is that as a Christian, I believe that all of these questions will be answered in time, if only we wait for God to answer them for us. If not in this life, at least we will know them in Heaven. Is all of this mucking about with trying to figure through intellectual issues really a waste of time when the simplest and fastest way to get anything done as a Christian is just to "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." (Proverbs 3:5)?

Right or wrong, wise or foolish, I just don't think I can help but take the stairs.