I’ve been asked recently, by more than one individual, why I’m doing this project. The answer to that runs much deeper than a one or two sentence reply. I do aspire to help people, to be available to them in whatever capacity they need from me, and to educate on the simple cleverness of just being. However the full truth runs deeper still. It’s who I am, it’s who I’ve always been. I’m a traveller… an explorer of humanity and mortality.
When my father was a young man on the cusp of his adult life, he came across a poem written by Will Allen Dromgoole. This poem opened in him the truth of who he was and who he wanted to be. Like my father, I am a bridge builder.
An old man, going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you the bridge at the eventide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”
~Will Allen Dromgoole
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