The Bridge Across Forever

I have just finished reading "The Bridge Across Forever" by Richard Bach.

My favourite love story - and story - of all time is "The Time-traveller's Wife". I am a notoriously slow reader and i always believed that this is because i like to savour every word, every expression for its syntax and semantics. Which i realised was only half-true, because The Time traveller's Wife is a book beautifully written, but it is also a considerably fat book which i gobbled up in under a week. I realised something about books what i hope to realise also applies to other areas of life - they're all very nice for what they are, but when the right one comes along, there will be a difference in ways very uncharacteristic of me.

That book was about love finding itself, and sustaining itself, and growing in itself inspite of the arbitrariness of time. It blew my mind, said to my wildest dreams, "yes, you are bigger than you think", and made me feel very, very sorry it was over when it was.

And then, a year and a half and a sudden and very recent ascension-of-the mind later, comes a slipped lumbar disc, a consequent prolonged bedrest, and an opportunity to catch up on all the reading. Seagull i had read. Illusions and Bridge...i had kept, knowing when i bought them that i wasn't ready yet, leaving them unread for many months, until now, when there was the time, and there was not only the readiness, but what i realised was a desperate need.

And i read Illusions. And Richard Bach, whom i would have trashed as just another superidealistic castles-in-the-air-constructor, became warm validation for what i am turning into as i feel myself rising, constantly rising newer levels of understanding, until i once again reach that place beside the shining Sun where i was transported in a blink that fatefully normal day, from where i saw everything as it really is. Might be. We cannot understand the whats and whys of whats going on up on the terrace...we cannot see. But from the terrace, we have a full view and a full perspective of what's going on below. The secret then, is to climb up.

And then i read The Bridge Across Forever. The story about the quest of the soulmate. And the finding. And the running away from. And the choosing to stay. And the doubting. And the complete annihilation of that doubting by the knowing. And i laughed and i cried and had vivid dreams which was just the way of my unconscious mind of saying, "i know."

I have always been proud of the fact that that my idea of Love is too evolved for this world to handle. And here is Richard Bach and his lovely Leslie Parrish, who first met in an elevator because they were both "going up." And who were evolved and evolving in their ideas and hopes alright, but still had their walls and chains and armours and dragons. How wonderful, how completely JOYOUS that they made the choices to overcome it all, not because they were sure, but because they cared enough for their kind of life to agonise over those choices and to plumb every depth of their - and what is best - each other's - being to take the steps they took. Together. They believed that such a love was worth the pain. they believed that their ultimate growth was worth that love.

Love and Growth - what's the difference really? M. Scott Peck would in a moment of reductionism say, nothing. Both are painful, both imply effort and relentless work. But both, with each other, and for each other, are the joy i believe we have been born to experience. Love for growth and growth with love - and you don't see pain. All you see is wonderful, glorious light, and as Bach would put it, "without the glare". And as i would call it, you would see what you see when you're up there on that swing beside the sun.