There's always another bridge to cross

            I moved a week ago.  I picked up my life and Lucy’s life and planted us down in a new neighborhood.  We have a real apartment with windows, tall ceilings, enough room to stretch our legs without bumping into each other.  With the help of my wonderful mother, who flew across the country for a week to help me settle in, this apartment has transformed from a couple lifeless rooms into a home.  My own home.  And life looks different when you have a home.  With this change in location, I am ready for other changes.  But I’m a bit nervous looking forward, because what if the changes I’m looking for never materialize?

It was just about 3 ½ years ago when I moved to Seattle.  As Sierra and I drove the very tail end of our trip, down the mountains on I90, dumping off the highway near Qwest and Safeco fields, getting onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct and driving a few exits into Fremont, I couldn’t help but be baffled by the idea of all this change.  I couldn’t stop smiling, but I also couldn’t slow my heartbeat.  New beginnings are exciting and wonderful, but they are also very scary. 

            Somewhere early in my adolescent days, I equated the idea of change to a very clear image in my brain.  This image has stuck with me always, almost as a dream does that haunts you repeatedly in your sleep.  I am walking across a rickety bridge above an abyss.  There’s no jumping down, and there’s certainly no possibility of flying upward above it all.  I can only go forward or back.  As I step onto the bridge, in front of me lays a foggy, dark, dense cloud.  I can see the next step, but nothing beyond that.  When I turn around and look back, everything appears clear as day.  I can see everything that existed behind me and everything I am leaving behind.  However, as I step forward on the bridge, the fog cloud moves forward with me, always one step ahead.  And as I move further onto the bridge, the images behind me begin to darken and blur, fading away.  Pretty soon, I’m in the middle of the bridge.  In front of me is the ever present fog cloud of the unknown, and behind me are the faded images of a past that is creeping away.  It is in the middle of the bridge that I can make a choice.  Do I step forward, taking a leap into the unknown in search of something new, or do I turn around and run back, hoping to catch the old images before they fade away completely?

            The tricky thing about this choice is that by the time you reach the middle of the bridge, the choice has already been made for you.  Too much behind you has changed and faded.  The things that comforted you before are no longer the same.  Do you really want to go backwards into a place that isn’t what you want it to be anymore?  So the only choice is to step forward.  Walk across the bridge.  Face the unknown.  Because eventually that foggy cloud begins to dissipate as you reach the other side.  It will never completely disappear.  But things become clearer after a while.  At least until you reach the next bridge. 

And there are always more bridges to cross.   Some are long, some are short, and some are easier to cross than others.  But there will always be bridges.  And that’s what makes life interesting.

In August of 2008, I began to cross one of the longest bridges I’d ever crossed, and as I crossed it, I realized something about change.  You can choose to change your life, but that’s not the hardest part.  The hard part is actually doing it.  I chose to pick up my life and transplant onto another coast.  But what it took me a little while to realize was that I couldn’t just change my location and change my life.  I couldn’t change my job and change my life.  Because the problem is that it wasn’t my life that needed changing, it was me.  Yes, moving to Seattle jump-started the change I needed to make in myself and definitely increased the likelihood of me making that change.  But moving to Seattle isn’t what changed me.  It wasn’t the bridge that changed me.  It was making the choice to walk across that bridge and continuing to the other side that changed me.  It was facing the fear of walking into the unknown with no safety net, no cushy ground to land on.  It was struggling through the emotional battlefield of making the change that changed me.  

Years later, here I stand on the other side of the bridge—on the other side of several bridges since that one.  This week I feel as though I am standing at the beginning of another abyss.  But this time I feel a little different.  I’m here and I’m finally ready to take the first step, but the bridge doesn't seem to be built yet.  And that’s ok, I can wait.  I'll just sit here and enjoy where I am in the meantime.