Sven takes me to this bridge in every season : where’s your bridge?

Photograph by Harry Högberg

It came from Sweden. An 11-second video in an email from someone I did not know, and have never met even still, these eight years later. At first, I was struck by the sounds of the music, from the French film, “Les Choristes,” and the journey across a beautiful bridge. “What is this?” I wondered aloud as I watched.

And then, the camera panned around, and down. There, held under a strap on what turned out to be the bike that was the vehicle for this journey, was a copy of my newly released book, “Life is a Verb.”

There had been photographs of this book in Hong Kong, with the harbor in the background. In a German bier hall, at the end of a long table of Germans drinking bier. In Israel at the wailing wall. In Nepal atop a mountain. In Australia’s outback. Being held by a statue of Elvis. The photos were coming in from around the world as this book was delivered into the hands of readers.

And then this. This video. It made me burst into tears, in a recognition of how powerful this was for me, to finally do my best work, and release it into the world. And to think that a man named Sven Cahling in a town in Sweden, was carrying it on the back of his bike across a bridge in his town.

The year was 2008. In the 8 years since that video arrived, Sven has sent me photographs and videos of the bridge being occupied by the townsfolk in the summer for movie nights, the screen at one end of the bridge and families on blankets dotting it like rectangular landing strips to the other shore.

Photo by Anders Forselius

In winter, the bridge comes to me cold and snowy. I am always surprised, and always thrilled, to get news of “my” bridge. Because it has become something larger to me than just a bridge over a river in Sweden. You know how this works–an object takes on the meaning with which we imbue it. That is the only possible explanation for carrying around that ratty beaded photo frame from my grandmother’s house, or that broken button from my mother’s wedding dress. Of no value, but of inestimable value. So, too, any object we invest with meaning. It becomes other than, and when we can watch it evolve through time, all the more so.

That bridge has become a symbol for me now, of something deeper, as bridges are metaphoric and symbolic in the way only bridges can be, one end on one shore, the other across the way, the bridge being the point of connection. It is merely a collection of know-how and metal, but more than that. Bridges are sunk into what is, essentially, common ground, though they may span two countries. I mean, really, how much more symbolic can one object be? It is called Gamla Älvbron, or The Old Riverbridge. My bridge, that is.

For the more literal among us who have a different kind of magic in their lives, let me explore this meaning-making phenomenon with you:

The root of what connects us as human beings is shared experience and those instances when things evolve over time as we watch. For example, my fourth grade teacher asked all of us in her class to be sure to send her a postcard from every place we traveled as we grew up. Perhaps I was the only person who, as an adult working all around the world, took her up on that request, but I sent her a postcard from over 60 countries, finding them all in a collage in her senior living apartment when I visited near her 85th birthday. That process took on a deeper meaning because of its consistency over time–for her, and for me. They were not just postcards, they were love and attentiveness, mindfulness and bridge-building.

Consistency over time. Symbol-making, relationship-making. An 11-second video and photographs in every season–creating a shared language over time.

What do we do consistently over time? Most often, we start – and we stop, even though we are drawn to consistency–the sisters who have taken a photograph in the same way for 50 years, for example. The author who has cooked one Julia Child recipe every night for a year. Our family vacations in the same place for 30 years. Consistency over time weaves meaning into our lives in significant ways.

Some people (me and John among them) see 11:11 on the clock many times every week. Does it mean anything? No, but it is a touchstone for tiny texts that say, simply, “11:11.” In that way, it becomes a concrete form of attentiveness that we share and now holds deeper meaning than just noticing the time on a clock.

Attentiveness. Consistency. Shared language.

Humor, love, friendships, relationships–all are built on shared language and shared visual language. This is important stuff in our lives. They are built on bridges we construct between us and others, as Sven did. They are built with a recognition that any bridge’s pylons must be sunk deep into the earth on each end, not into shaky sand. With a recognition that the arc of any bridge is an arc built of great, equalized pressure, tension and balance.

That a stranger took the time to send me that video, and that I could see it for what deeper meaning it holds, that is relatedness, meaning, symbol, shared language. What is your bridge? Who is your Sven?

Bridges are built to span a distance between, without closing the way beneath them. They are built to provide passage over obstacles. Be open to the bridges around you. And the bridges far from you. Where is your bridge? How are you building them, or not?

My hope is to walk across that bridge one day, with Sven Cahling riding his bike alongside me.