Old Roads, New Bridges
Lyn Allen - ICF Master Certified Coach (she/her)
?? I help advancing leaders: 1? Grow into new roles with less burn-out or self-doubt & more confidence 2? Navigate increasingly complex challenges 3? Co-create intentional culture 4? Unlock potential in those you lead
Driving into town from our remote homestead requires bumping along 3 miles of rough dirt roads, leading to narrow, winding lanes and finally, older 2-lane highways.
“Smooth ride” is not part of the experience.
But nowhere on this trek has been bumpier than the old bridge on the final leg of the trip.
This bridge spans a creek on the little highway into town and, until recently, sported layers of overlapping patches and offered a spine-jarring transit every time I drove across it.
Now we have a newly constructed bridge with smooth approaches and – as of now – zero patches.
It is novel to drive to town without feeling my teeth rattle in my head….at least for that span of the road.
The transformation did not happen overnight and at times, had me doubting we’d ever see the finished product. The project took months (and months), and offered the inconvenience of stopped traffic and the pain of seeing lush pastures torn up and filled with heavy construction equipment.
If you’ve ever experienced any construction project at all, you know what I’m talking about. Getting from “what was” to what you want? Takes time, energy and effort.
The construction process is one l-o-o-n-g transition featuring disruption and messiness, and often begins with demolition, a tearing down of at least part of what was there before.
In the early stages, with the messiness of deconstruction and clearing the land, not only was it hard to see "progress," as the existing roadway dropped to one lane only, we lost some of the functionality we had enjoyed before.
Things got worse before they got better.
An observer unfamiliar with the construction process might think we were going backwards instead of making "progress."
It seemed forever before we could see signs of an actual bridge taking shape because building the foundation took so long.
The on-site arc of the project, begun with barely noticeable survey lines across the landscape, progressed through stages of activity, often seeming chaotic to anyone sitting in a blocked lane of traffic waiting for large, noisy equipment to lumber out of the way, while hives of workers swarmed the site.
For me, it was a perfect reflection of the of this larger transition humans are being asked to live into, as we struggle to build new bridges that will allow us to move forward.
Yes, I know – we still have a little work to do on what constitutes “forward.” It may seem at times as if some of us are frantically excavating the old – old patterns, old beliefs, old narratives, while some of us are just as frantically clutching at the old, trying to fill in the excavations with what offers a measure of reassurance through familiarity.
As challenging as that one little bridge on a small country highway was, consider:?
We – humankind – are being asked to build many bridges simultaneously, with some of those being personal bridges in our internal landscapes and some being collective efforts, including:
Bridges FROM who Culture told us we had to be, TO who we’re here to be, who we’re becoming, individually and collectively as more expanded reflections of the Divine spark residing within each one of us.
Bridges FROM old ways of thinking, perceiving and behaving that resulted in dehumanizing, repressive and genocidal “othering,” TO remembering we are all connected through That Which Is Greater AND what I do to you, I am doing to myself.
And possibly my personal favorite:
Bridges FROM the old Power Over, Control-Conquer-Dominate framing of success and achievement, TO a collaborative world where we finally transcend the lose/win polarity based in primal survival mentality…where we grok the truth that survival itself is, ultimately, a collaborative process.
To distill all I’ve just said: We are in transition(s) and that’s often chaotic, confusing and messy.
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But -? “we’re in transition and that’s really hard” is not the whole story.
When we can shift from the primal need to protect and defend against the uncertainty of transitions and the unfamiliar of the emergent….well, then…something else becomes possible.
To illustrate:
In the 1984 movie, Starman, an alien visits earth briefly, and offers a message as he prepares to depart. In his message, he points to the human capacity for transcending the noise of differences, to become mutually supportive.
My best recollection of the message:
When things are at their worst is when you (humans) are at your best.
I wonder if some deeply seated, often -hidden capacity to be there for each other gets activated when we experience hard things together.?
Notice how we see people lean in, over and over again, in the wake of disasters, most recently hurricanes Helene and Milton, reminding us of the expansiveness and generosity of humans…not the divisiveness, mistrust and othering.
Here’s what I’ll leave you with: Yes, things are bumpy right now. Scary, messy, confusing. Not “What they used to be.”
How do we know that’s not a good thing, an indicator of how Life is calling us into a “forward” we may not yet be able to appreciate or even recognize?
What I trust is this: We have tremendous capacity for generosity of spirit, to transcend philosophical differences, to remember that we are all connected as, together, we’re finding ways to build new bridges on old roads.
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If you're ready for support in navigating transition and bridging into something new, here's how I can help:
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