Staircase dream

[sheriff_rango]

 
The last time I was lucid I decided that rather than 'jump' into darkness I would hang about in the dream for various reasons. I stepped out of the room I'd gained awareness in and started off down the stairs. I'm not sure if it was a place I knew or not  but I felt like it was only supposed to be maybe a short flight or two. It was very dark and gloomy despite it  being light in the room I'd just left. I ran down because I wanted to explore but the staircase just wouldn't end. I started talking to a tiny toy man on one step. I carried on walking and I saw a baby on another step and picked it up (it's not safe there!) and carried on. I went back up the steps and now the toy had turned into a tiny man and we walked out together into daylight. I saw the baby's mother who then handed me another kid to hold. But by the time I was out I felt that my lucidity was lowered and everything was kind of chaotic after that.

Now, I prefer to go into these things with some kind of game-plan. Lately its been to get lucid, run out of the scene as fast as I can until everything goes black and see where it takes me (I'm still working on this technique). This time though, I actually wanted to explore the present dream and planned as much because I wanted to test a few things out. But I couldn't get out of the building! I feel like there's a message or a lesson this - maybe that I should be focusing on moving onward and upwards instead of dawdling and being complacent? Or maybe something more practical like it was testing my navigation skills in the NPR and I should have willed an exit or walked through the walls or something? Or could it just be a case of if 'it ain't broke...' and I should persist with whatever I was doing first and not try to innovate too much?  Maybe all of the above? I'd appreciate anyone's interpretion.