The Bridge

Why am I writing this Blog? Why should you share it?

 

In High school I heard a phrase that I also repeated many times. “Cry me a river, build me a bridge and get over it!” This was usually said to someone who was either complaining about something, talking about something hard they were going through or simply making a mountain out of a mole hill. Either way, the words were meant to hurt and/or stop the person complaining. Usually said in jest but the words cut deep none the less. Basically, quit whining – It’s doesn’t matter.

But it obviously did matter at the time to the person going through it or they wouldn’t have been emotional about it in the first place.

We’ve all been through trials and hard times. No two people ever experience the exact same things and the reason for that is we are all individually unique in our own beautifully different way. Even identical twins will experience two separate lives.

While we are all individual and no other person we come in contact with will know everything about us and understand what we are going through completely, we do come across others from time to time whose lives run parallel to ours in such a way that we can connect on a very intimate and private level.

No parent should ever have to bury their child, but many do. And while everyone feels saddened for them and offers their sincerest condolences they cannot completely understand the pain that the parents who’ve lost a child are going through.

 

We are all friends and we all have different experiences that we bring to the table, and we will all connect in different ways with one another.

We’ve heard that our experiences- trials, pain, joy etc. are to make us and shape us into who we will become. While we do grow from these I’ve recently learned something…

Our trials aren’t always for us.

We get so caught up in our own lives that it is sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees, and hard to imagine other people could possibly be going through anything even close the same thing we are going through right now. Our current pain Is just too much to even contemplate another person going through and far too often we fall into victim mode and in the moment, that’s not a bad thing.

Of late, however, I’ve discovered that if we keep our past pain and our trials buried deep inside we are indeed being selfish and depriving others of a chance to reach out and realize that they aren’t alone in their suffering. That someone else is going through, or has gone through, a similar situation.

With hindsight being 20/20, we can look back on our biggest trials, and see what it was that got us through to the next day, and the next day and the day after that until we were finally able to step out of that forest and breathe again.

We need to be able to let other people know that the river they’re crying, they didn’t alone. You cried it too, just a mile up the river bank, and guess what? You already built that bridge so they don’t have to. And you will gladly help them, hand in hand to cross so they don’t have to get over it alone. 

I'm hoping this blog will be that bridge for someone, somewhere.