I live near the Mississippi River. Some people cross it each day to get to and from work. Me? I rarely ever have the need to be on the other side of the river. Although, today I was. 

As I was driving across the river, I commented to my companion how much I love bridges. It’s true. Bridges are such a strange symbol of human ingenuity. To design something with both strength and beauty that overcomes such obstacles? Is that not a definition of the human experience?

It’s more than that, though. 

Tonight, as drove back to my side of the River, I nearly cried. My weekend was spent in a gentle enveloping of happiness and now I was going back to a world of stress and uncertainty. Crossing the bridge suddenly became this huge metaphor for exactly what I was doing; crossing into a whole other area of my life. 

Lately, I have been consumed with work. Not the work I love, my writing, but the work I must do to support myself. And I like my job, I do. But this is not what I saw myself doing. This is not even what I see myself doing in five years. And, of late, it has become the primary source of stress in my life. So the bridge became a bridge from leisure to pressure, from a life filled with something intangible yet real, to a life that feels sorely without. 

I have said several times lately that vocabulary cannot encompass my feelings as I wish it would. This was true on the bridge tonight. Suffice it to say, I profoundly felt the effect of crossing into something, yet leaving behind something else. 

Is it any wonder bridges become the turning point for so many? This creation of man that spans something vast and seemingly unconquerable? Someone, at some time, conceived and built the way across. It takes courage to follow that path, to use a bridge as it was intended. A man could easily make it halfway and be confronted by the impossibility of the task. Does it overcome him? Uncertainty, fear and loss, the vastness of whatever void he is crossing; it can blind him to the prospect of actually reaching the other side.  And does it reason that the other side is necessarily better? Is it truly where he wants to go? Or is it the only option?

Yes, I can easily see the indecision at the center of the bridge. The hopelessness that could freeze a man right there, before he passes the halfway point. 

Yet, bridges must be crossed. Sometimes we must go backwards and forwards. Crossing again and again until we are led to the destination we were always meant for. But we cannot stop in the middle. We cannot trap ourselves in the limbo of despair or indecision. 

For my part, this is a new aspect of my life. Switching between one reality and another until I can find a way to merge the two. Taking the bridge one way, to my freedom and euphoria, and then back again to the everyday ebb and flow of stress and contentment. And I can look forward to many other nights crossing into one realm with the profound sadness of leaving another behind.