let the bridges stand
Since I’m just coming off of this conference, I want to share some of what I learned. It’s all fresh, and I got a lot out of this event, so I want to write about it. This is a space where I do a lot of processing, and being able to put what I learned into my own words can keep those lessons in front of me. It’s definitely a strategy that I recommend to everyone who has gone through an impactful event. So allow me these next couple of days to cover these points. Then, I promise we will move on to the third biggest issue affecting military members and their families (we definitely spent so long on separations that even I forgot that’s what we were originally doing).
For a little bit of context, this event was put on by the life insurance company that I am part of. I grew up with this company and now do some work for my parents through it. I will be stepping out into a bigger role come January, but I’ll talk more about that later. As much as these conferences are about life insurance, they are also very much about leadership, people skills, and personal reflection. These skills translate to all areas of life, so I have enjoyed going regardless of what stage I was at with the company. I started attending these events when I was 12, entirely by choice. As we like to say, “This ain’t your granddaddy’s insurance company.”
This company has always felt like family to me. I think of every person there as someone extraordinary to know. But it is a business, and like every job, sometimes people leave. And in this situation, often, leaving the job means leaving the family. Not because of anything I would hold against them, but often because of whatever personal things they were dealing with. Leaving the company meant cutting off all connections to it. It meant saying goodbye often without warning, especially for the people who lived across the country that I would only see at events.
All of this to say, “Please don’t burn any bridges.” We don’t keep the bridges standing just for us. We do it for the people on the other side, too. We never know when we’ll need to cross over the river, but even more than that, we never know when the other person needs to come back. I’ve had some remarkable friendships throughout my life. Many of them ended for one reason or another, but there are very few that ended with scorched earth. Even the ones that ended on less than stellar terms, I think we would agree that we’ve grown since the moments that tore us apart. I don’t hold anything against someone who did and said stupid things as a teenager because I can take full accountability for the dumb things I did.
The military community is such a small world. The longer your family stays in, the more people you know. And beyond that, the more people we will meet who know people that we know. That six degrees of separation starts to get smaller and smaller. I remember listening to the Household Six podcast (a great military spouse-run show), and one of the hosts said that as a young spouse, they had planned to reinvent themselves at every base. The idea of moving every two or three years meant they could become someone totally different in the next location. They quickly realized, though, that the people from the last base would follow them or show up again. It’s pretty hard to become someone totally new when everyone knows who you were just six short months ago.
Military life is hard. I think we’ve definitely established that with all of our talk of separations. But beyond the separations, there are other difficult things. It is hard to move frequently. It is hard to struggle with the same things, like finding a job, over and over. It is hard to have something outside your family make significant decisions for your relationship (the one that often bothers me the most).
We need community. When our spouse is gone, we need people to lean on. When we end up in a new city, state, and country, we need people to lean on. When we run into wall after wall while chasing our dreams, we need people to lean on. I’m not saying we need to be enablers, co-dependent, or people pleasers. But there is a difference between setting firm boundaries with someone and burning a bridge entirely.
The older I get (and I fully recognize how young I am), the smaller the world is. I think people come into our lives for a reason. Some people are there for the long haul, and some are just short-timers. Some are there to annoy the crap out of us, but then one day, they somehow become our best friends (sibling relationships, anyone?). Keeping those bridges up does leave us vulnerable. Some people will use the opportunity to rip our hearts open. But there is no true love without risk, and by leaving those bridges standing, I think we will find some beautiful things that come back into our lives that we could never have imagined.
I hope the people that I’ve seen burn bridges find ways to repair them. They were incredibly special, and the loss of their relationship was felt deeply. I don’t get to decide what the bridges look like for other people. I just want to declare that mine are still standing. Above all else, protect your heart. If that means burning a bridge, then do it. I certainly have known people in such toxic relationships that fire was the only way to set them free. As an optimist, I think people can change. I certainly have, and I hold on to the hope that one day, we both will have grown enough that connection is possible, even if it is just a friendly wave from across the room.