One of Dad’s more common sayings was “Don’t burn your bridges before you cross them.” It was a fairly common saying and relatively easy to understand. However, as I watched Dad work on one project and another, I gained a deeper understanding of what just what it was that he meant.
Bridges are opportunities. You can only take advantage of an opportunity by crossing a bridge. The reference to burning the bridges goes back to the concept of keeping foes from following you by burning the bridge you just crossed. In battle, this was an effective way of slowing or stopping an opponent. However, it also keeps you from going back that way. Sometimes, that may be exactly what you wanted. However, there are times when you need not only to avoid burning those bridges, but you may even want to repair one now and again so that it will be there when you return down the path. Not every path you take is a permanent direction for you. You may even decide that you want to take that “road less traveled” just to see what’s down that path. There’s no use destroying the road as you go, you may find that it leads you in a direction that you have no desire to pursue.
The most common problem with bridge-burning relates to jobs. The old adage of “the grass is always greener on the other side” applies in great measure to job hunting. Just when you find a job that looks promising, another turns up and looks like it is just the thing you need to be doing. But what if it doesn’t work out? What will you do then? Well, if you’ve burned your bridge (left your job without proper notice and on good terms), you can forget going back, there will be nothing but ashes there to walk across. Unless you’re a fire-walker, you are out of luck… and out of a job.
When you drive down the road, your mind begins to wonder and you find sometimes that you have not been paying much attention to what you have passed. Sometimes, you suddenly realize that you have gone through a whole town (or two) without noticing anything. You also cross many bridges when you drive. I’d be willing to guess that you cross bridges every day and don’t even realize it. On your way to work or school or to the store or whatever tomorrow, notice the bridges. Some are small and cross only a drainage ditch. Others may cross rivers or highways or other things. But they are a part of our lives that we take for granted and rarely notice. The challenge then is to notice the bridges first. Then, you’ll have the opportunity to NOT burn them. If we’re not careful, we may sometimes race across a bridge (a figurative bridge) so fast that it burns in our trail. Then, it’s too late to go back that way, and we didn’t even know we burned it!
Well, Dad rarely burned a bridge on either side of him, and hopefully, I’ve learned to do the same. Now… if I can just learn to notice the bridges…
