Sunday Serenity: Bridging the Gap

Humans are amazingly inventive when it comes to bridges, those wonderful constructions that enable us to get over obstructions, whether that obstruction is a river, a bay, or just a bunch of other roads. Which got me to thinking about bridges in life, because, well, it’s Sunday and I like to think about things like that on my Sunday walk.

Physical bridges are designed down to the last inch (or centimeter), lives depend on them every day. But despite all that pressure to be perfect, some designers also make them works of art, delights to the eye. Functional and beautiful, those bridges.

We make our own bridges in life, too. Reaching out to someone we haven’t heard from in a while, or talking on the phone every month or so to keep a friendship alive. I send out postcards every few stops, picking names at random out of my address book, hoping to bridge the time and space between us as I travel around the country.

At the end of the day, isn’t every connection between us a bridge between two souls? Some days we can slide across that bridge, oh, so easily. Other days, it might feel like climbing Mount Whitney, 14,000 feet of effort trying to remember the reward at the top. Whether it’s a postcard or a quick lunch, a tweet or a text, these little bridges are the connections between you and the rest of the world.

Maybe today is a good day to build a bridge to someone? Take a spin through your memories or photos or contacts list and find one person you miss and then give them a call or send them a text. I’ve found it’s not the actual words that matter; it’s that someone thought of me, someone reached out to me, someone met me halfway on that bridge between us, that’s what really matters.