Views from the Bridge
Fear Shrinks Our World. Wonder Widens It.
I went on a walk recently with a new friend, one of those long, meandering walks that feels as good for the soul as for the body. We’re both in seasons of reimagining our lives, trying to see what’s next. He’s retired, while I’m in what I’d call the capstone phase of my career. Different vantage points, same weather system. We’re both sorting through the debris that collects after decades of effort, asking the big questions: What’s worth protecting, and what’s worth releasing? Where is fear quietly steering the ship, and who gave it the keys?
He told me about a trip he’d just taken to his family’s ancestral city. It had stirred something deep in him, bringing him face-to-face with both his history and his fear. During his visit, he met a couple who run a travel blog called Views from the Bridge. They took him to a literal bridge overlooking the area where his family once lived and filmed an interview. As he told me this story, something clicked in my mind. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s famous teaching popped up, uninvited but timely:
“The whole world is a very narrow bridge and the essential thing is not to be overcome by fear.”
I’ve quoted that line for years. It’s practically rabbi caffeine: reliable, brisk, keeps the spirit awake. But as my friend spoke about standing on an actual bridge, I saw it differently.
When we’re on a bridge, fear often comes from how narrow it feels. Our focus tightens, our knees wobble, and suddenly we’re calculating wind speed like amateur engineers. We look down, fixate on each step, forget the purpose of the crossing altogether. But as my friend described standing there, gazing out over the landscape, I realized maybe the antidote to fear isn’t courage. It’s perspective.
When our vision shrinks to the planks beneath our feet, fear floods in. But when we lift our gaze to the horizon, to the panorama around us, something opens. The bridge stops being a test of balance and becomes a balcony with a view. As the psalmist writes, Min ha-meitzar karati Yah, anani ba-merchav Yah — “From the narrow place I called out, and You answered me from a vast expanse.”
Fear, then, is often a symptom of constriction. We can’t always make the bridge wider, but we can remember to look up. We can widen our inner landscape.
Some interpret Rabbi Nachman’s bridge as the passage between life and death. In that reading, his advice is straightforward and strangely comforting: Don’t be afraid, because you’ll make it across. We all will.
Still, I prefer to think of the bridge as this messy, beautiful stretch of life itself, the transitional space between what was and what will be. The invitation isn’t just to keep walking, but to keep looking. Fear narrows. Wonder expands.
Maybe that’s the blessing of this stage of life, mine, my friend’s, maybe yours too. We’re learning to stop gripping the railing so tightly and start noticing the view. And if the bridge shakes a little, that just means we’re still alive and the view is worth it.