Bridging the Gap

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about crossing bridges, about spanning the distance between two people, connecting across the seemingly vast chasms of isolation that tend to separate us from each other. One of the recurring themes I’ve discovered in studying literature is the inherent loneliness of the modern world. We have enough money to afford ourselves private spaces, our own rooms in our own homes on our own lots, and in so many ways it is nice not to all have to live on top of each other in some mud hut built alongside a swarm of other overflowing mud huts. But the benefit of everyone living on top of each other is constant companionship, the kind of companionship modern societies just don’t seem to be able to approximate.


Just about every adult person I know admits to being more lonely than they expected to be in their lives. Some are better at bridging the gap than others. I am particularly bad at overcoming the tendency toward isolation, and I often find myself battening down the hatches when others try to reach out to me. For a variety of reasons, I have been ruminating on this topic for a while, but something happened the other day that reminded me to try and be willing to put myself out there.

It was on Sam’s birthday, actually. We were eating lunch at a local Pho restaurant, where the tables were set up in long rows end to end and you had to eat bumping elbows with perfect strangers. Linc was situated at the head of the long table in his high chair, and about halfway through our meal, a family was seated right beside us. A woman with this neighboring family asked how old Linc was. I hesitated for a moment because he doesn’t really seem his age and sometimes people give you perplexed looks when you tell them how old he is, like they were expecting you to say 11 months and you answered 2 years old and now they don’t know where to take the conversation.

I went ahead and told the woman that Linc is two, and like I expected it was a conversation killer. As we finished our meal, I was making a mental note to tell Sam later in the car that I was thinking of just giving people a made up age to avoid the awkwardness. Then, while Sam was paying the check, the woman leaned over and gave me a business card for her business, a special needs outing service that organizes events for children and adults with special needs ranging from picnics to visits to amusement parks. She patted Lincoln’s hand and told me that she works with many children with Down syndrome, with Autism, and even some in wheelchairs and facing severe medical issues. Linc smiled at her and grabbed the business card out of my hand.

So, instead of saving face, I made contact with someone, someone I would never have shared more than three words with if I had answered her with an easy but untrue answer about Lincoln’s age. It reminds me yet again that what separates us is usually our fear of vulnerability, which really just means our fear that other people will be privy to our weaknesses and faults. But, what connects us to other people, if we are willing to share it, is that very lack of perfection we are trying to hide. The next step in my thinking, then, is that Lincoln is facing a life where he will be unable to pretend to be perfect, unable to hide his weaknesses. Does that mean he will be better at bridging the gap than I am? That he will form connections more easily? All I can do is hope so. One thing I know is that so far, he’s done nothing but draw people to him, and by extension to us. Our own little bridge.