THE BRIDGE TO INFINITY

Fate is like trying to command the grains of sand to stay within your fingertips – the harder you try to hold on, the further away it all slips from you. I didn’t believe in fate, or, at least, if I did, I had lost that belief long ago. I didn’t believe. And that was just the problem.

My father was given a small black notebook when he started his career. He never opened it, never once wrote a word in it. Every day I’d walk past his desk, where he sat diligently – creating solutions where no one else could find them. Every day I’d notice the little black notebook, emblazoned on the front with the words “Tough times don’t last. Tough teams do.”

The time came when I packed my bags to move across the continent; to find my own way. I had always been both a dreamer and a doubter – a person who saw darkness ahead but forged a way through it. I believed that if I could reach the horizon, there would be more. I would be more. There would be light, and I would follow the horizon until I became it.

When my plane touched down on new ground, I reached into my backpack and found, to my surprise, the black notebook from my father’s desk. Curious, I opened the book. It was still stiff, from eons spent standing by while stories flew by; unwritten in. The inside cover had just one sentence – “It is as easy to create a castle, as it is to create a button.”

Days flew by. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into moments of my life, lost on shores of unhappiness. I had grown to despise my job, and with the world crumbling around us, it was not long after that the company went under, and despise turned to despair. I had just bought my new place, in this new town, and now I was at least twenty thousand dollars in debt.

Desperate for any hope, I sat burning the midnight oil, hunting for jobs that were both available and where I may not spend my days in misery. I took a sidelong glance at the notebook, and scoffed. Yeah, if it was so easy to attract a castle, I sure thought a lot more people would live in castles. I opened the notebook, with the intent of tearing each and every page to shreds. It was then that I noticed something. Something small, that could have been trivial. But my despairing mind told me to look closer. On the front, the words “Tough times don’t last. Tough teams do.” Written in white impactful, bold lettering on the slim frame of the notebook. On the inside cover, the seemingly contradictory statement, “It is as easy to create a castle, as it is to create a button,” was written in black lettering on the stark white page. Perhaps half delusional, I turned the cover back and forth, peering between the inside and outside cover.

Then, I flew to my feet. It had been sitting there, unused on a desk, unused, because my father already knew how to use it.

There was a message, a mind-altering assumption, for those who took the time to look at both sides of the coin – both sides of the cover. In fact, the message was quite simple. Time is temporary. In fact, time is an illusion, as the only time there ever is - is now. Each person is valuable, as a resource for that which we do not know ourselves. And each of us is a reservoir of knowledge, from which others may draw. It is with this assumption, that the inside cover made sense – we are made of our smallest thoughts, as much as we are made by our longest days.

And so, to have a castle ourselves, we must seek out those who have castles already, and ask them how they came to live in castles. Then, we must set all thoughts, deeds, and courses with the intent of achieving that goal, and let go of the wheel. We may have a better way of doing things, but we do not have a universe with which we can achieve it.

Floored with this new assumption, I did not tear the notebook to shreds. Instead, I wrote one sentence in it – “By the end of the month, I will pay off my twenty thousand dollars in debt.” I wrote this sentence again the next day, and, each day, I wrote it one more time than the last.

I could end this story by telling of my triumphs, of how I became not only free of debt – but free. But that would not be as effective as what I’m about to tell you instead.

Hope is a bridge. It a bridge between imperfection and possibility. And our thoughts are the travelers which occupy both that which is, and that which could be. At the end of the bridge is the horizon. And the beautiful thing about the horizon, is that you never quite reach it.