One October evening around 11 p.m. , I was running to catch the tramway home. As I stepped into the tram, a little street girl named Ana Maria popped in behind me. She is a sweet, tiny girl with an engaging smile. On that day I found Ana Maria with a shaved head, a fashion she periodically wears to fight against lice. By keeping her hair short and by dressing like a boy, she also fends off potential perpetrators. But Ana Maria's weakness, and mine, is her big, consuming eyes that tell you at a glance that she is a girl.

I asked Ana Maria what she was doing out so late in a neighborhood so far away from her friends. She told me that she just got something to eat from a lady at a nearby apartment. When I asked her where she was going, she said, “To make my bed.” I asked her where she would do this and she replied, “Wherever I find a place.” I could tell that she wasn't going to tell me. I did know that she used to sleep on top of a sandwich kiosk, but a few days earlier the street boys were wrestling on top of the shop and accidentally ripped out the electric wires. So at night they were scattered all across the city.

It was difficult for me to get off the tram that night. I knew that I was going home to my nice warm apartment with my clean sheets and fluffy pillow, but I couldn't stop thinking about where Ana Maria would be “making her bed.” Would she sleep in a stair well? Would she sleep on top of another kiosk? Would she climb into the sewers and sleep on a hot water pipe? How would Ana Maria make her bed? Would she find a blanket or simply sleep on the cold concrete? Could this little 12-year-old girl sleep in peace without worrying about residents or shop owners beating her up or without worrying about other street children violating her? Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but Ana Maria has no place to lay her head.

Nietzsche said, “When you despise amiability and soft beds, when you seek to make your bed as far as possible from the softies: then you are at the source of your virtue…thus spoke Zarathustra.” As I wandered home, I knew I was walking with the nihilist. I was walking away from Ana Maria, from the softies. I was going to make my bed far from amiability. In the virtue of my security, I found no virtue at all.

Ana Maria and I were both going to make our beds – I in my lack of virtue, Ana Maria in her lack of a loving home. We both walked into the darkness of night, longing for the morning light.

“Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence?

If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed in Hell, behold Thou art there.

If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

Even there Thy hand will lead me, And Thy right hand will lay hold of me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night.”

Even the darkness is not dark to Thee, And the night is as bright as the day.

Darkness and light are alike to Thee.