Friday, May 13, 2011

bridges

bridges are built to span divides. sometimes, they are wonders, reaching across what seem to be insurmountable canyons between two sides in breathtaking leaps arcing across the sky.

bridges, however, as much as they may be wonders, are not natural. they do not arise by themselves. they do not exist on their own. they are constructs, products of engineering, testaments to the will and work of humans to bring them into existence, involving the personal sacrifices of long hours of careful thought with hard labor in meticulous detail with great commitment reaching outwards from both sides towards a rendezvous located improbably in the midst of absolute thin air. from imagination to idea to hope to plan to survey to foundation to beam to tendril to suspension to span to arch to bridge. all the product of people.

so why do people put so much of themselves into such connections?

because for all the work involved, we understand the imperative to bridge the barriers dividing us. we know that for all the expenditures of labor and resources that are required to span a gulf, they are nothing compared to the untold costs of time and effort involved in traversing the chasms that sometimes exists between people. bridges expedite crossings, and thereby liberate our energies so that they may be better spent on following whatever journeys we are undertaking--including journeys across the abyss, where we may be enriched through mutual interactions with those we meet on the other side allowing us to grow in ways we would have never known given our past divides.

and as much as we may never use a bridge, it's still good to know they are there. because invariably we will encounter times when we'll need them, invariably times most dire requiring great haste when we won't have the ability to make the canyons on our own, when they will serve to be the routes of safety and conduits of aid that comfort us and, if necessary, carry us beyond our afflictions to the havens of new companions where we may learn in truth that no travels are ever really taken alone.

with bridges, our journeys are made easier, faster, richer, safer--all things paramount to our experience in the races we have undertaken in our lives. and while they do not solve everything, and while they are not guarantees of our performance, they do serve to make things better as strive to go on all our ways.

which is why it's important to respect them and honor them and to do our best to maintain them, even if only as metaphors. not for their breath-taking leaps across the sky, but for the connections they represent in our spirits and the message they leave with our hearts: a mutual expression of a common desire of a benefit beyond the mere physical to be shared for all on our collective paths through this strange existence we call life.

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