I’m one of those men people often take wrong. They think I’m not paying attention. They underestimate my intelligence. Once I speak up, they call me crazy behind my back. I’m all right with that. It works in my favor. Let them think what they like. I love being me. It’s fun. I’m never bored. I say dream big; it’s never too late to try.
A man who is misjudged is left alone long enough to build what he needs to build. While they are busy talking about you, you have time to work. While they are busy pleasing the crowd, you have time to listen to your own soul. Those who need crowds to help them feel important don’t have time to dream anymore. They’re too busy pleasing everyone else to leave any time for themselves. In the end, most of them end up old and alone, trying to figure out who they really are. Never forget yourself and your needs.
The man on the bridge had to keep moving.
Behind him, on the bank, the people shouted. They did not know they were shouting. To them it was only talking. Advice, they called it. Concern.
Watch your step there.
That board looks loose.
Maybe you should wait.
Maybe you should not cross at all.
He had built the bridge himself. No one had helped him carry the wood. No one had stood in the water with him when it was cold and high and the current pulled at his legs. Still, they talked as if they owned the river.
This is how it is when you try to leave the shore.
A man or woman decides to do something that has never been done in their small circle. They want to love who they are called to love. They want to write what is in their chest. They want to move to a town where nobody knows their name. They want to quit the job that is killing them and take up the work that might save them.
The world does not clap. It clears its throat.
Are you sure? it says.
People get hurt that way.
Think of your reputation.
Think of security.
Think of us.
Most of it is fear. Sometimes it is fear wearing the mask of love. A mother’s worry. A father’s shame. A friend’s quiet jealousy. A stranger’s need to drag you back down to the level where they do not have to look up.
They speak from the bank because they have never put a foot on the first board. The river is only an idea to them. All they know are the ways it might kill you. They have never felt how cold it is on the skin, or how strong you become when you learn you can swim.
They think their fear is wisdom.
You must know the difference.
There is a kind of warning that comes from experience. An old soldier telling you where the shells fall. A fisherman watching the wind turn. A man who has burned his hand on the same stove you are about to touch. That you listen to. You would be a fool not to.
But there is another kind. The noisy kind. It comes from people who have never crossed anything harder than a dry road. They talk of collapse and failure and shame because collapse and failure and shame are the only horses they have ever ridden in their minds.
If you let them, they will ride them straight into your head.
You will stand at the edge of your own life with your feet nailed to the dirt by other people’s imagination.
A person like that does not always mean to be cruel. They are simply ruled by pictures of disaster. Their gift is to see ten ways something might go wrong. They do not see the eleven ways it might go right, because those ways require courage, and courage cannot be borrowed by talking about it. It has to be picked up and carried.
So the man on the bridge hears them. He turns his head for a moment. That is natural. We are born to turn when someone calls our name.
But then he looks back at more info the far bank.
It is a thin line of ground, but it is his. It is the thing he has seen in his sleep, the city he walks in when his eyes are shut. A small house. A studio. A stage. A quiet life. Whatever it is, it belongs to him more than the fear behind him does.
He thinks:
If the bridge breaks, I can swim.
If I fall, I will hit water, not fire.
If I fail, it will be my failure, earned honestly.
A life where you never fall is a life where you never climbed.
People will call you reckless for stepping out when they are the ones who have never tested what their own legs can do. They will decorate their cages with the word Responsible. They will point to your open door and call it dangerous.
Remember this:
You are the one click here on the bridge.
They are on the bank.
You feel the weight of your own feet. You know how your hands built each plank. You know which risks are madness and which are simply the price of being alive.
There is justice in that. Not the kind a court gives you. The other kind. The quiet balancing that comes when a person finally stops living by other people’s predictions and starts living by their own decisions.
You will make mistakes. Everyone does. The universe is large, and there are a thousand ways to check here be wrong. But there are also a thousand ways to be right, and none of them belong to you if you never take a step because here a shouting crowd told you they were afraid.
You can listen. You should. A closed ear is as foolish as a closed mind. But listening is not the same as obeying. You take what is useful. You leave what is only fear.
In the end, you answer for your life alone. Not your parents. Not the neighbor. Not the man on the corner who said you were crazy to try.
When you are old, it will not comfort you to say, “I did not cross because they were afraid.”
You will want to be able to say, “I crossed because I was called.”
So build your bridge as well as you can. Test the boards. Tie the ropes tight. Then go.
If they shout, let them.
If they call you foolish, let them.
If they call you crazy, let them.
If they predict your fall, let them.
You were not put here to prove their fear wrong. You were put here to find out what your courage is worth.
On some morning, with the sun low and the water moving under you, you will take the last step and feel solid ground again. It will not be the end. There will be other rivers. Other bridges. Other voices telling you to turn back.
By then you will know something you did not know at the start:
Bridges are not built to impress the people who stay behind.
They are built so that the one who needs to cross can.
And if you are that one, then today is as good a day as any to take the first step.
Crowds will talk. Bridges are built in silence.
God bless you all. May these words find the ones who need them and help heal what is ready to be healed.
— Roy Dawson
Earth Angel - Master Magical Healer
Musician - Singer‑Songwriter - Recording Artist