Wanzology

Never Burn A Bridge You May Need To Escape Over

 Summertime and the living is easy. Yeah, fish aren't jumping, but we're still in the midst of our wonderful summertime. How you doing? Welcome to another episode of the WANZOLOGY! I am your host. And yes, we are still reading from #THEBOOKOFWANZ. Oh, update. Uh, I wanted to start a blog and I'm still researching exactly how to do it. So if you, uh, have experience in that regard, if you know how to set up a blog and you can educate an old man, please send me an email: info@thewanz. com. That'd be great. Great.

All right. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Okay. Uh, this chapter is a saying that my father really, really ingrained in me, and I, I, I loved it. I just couldn't believe where he got this from. It goes: NEVER BURN A BRIDGE YOU MAY NEED TO ESCAPE OVER.

I believe my father was brilliant. He quit school after the 8th grade but raised me saying things I didn't understand until I was 35 and older. He was very good with people. Owned a television sales and service business for a decade. I spent many a Saturday during my teen years answering phones and running around on service calls with him. Some afternoons we'd go play golf, and he would sing this old song from the thirties “Walk, chicken, walk, cause you too fat to fly”!

I think it was during junior summer, when we were talking one Saturday about climbing the ladder of success. He was pretty set on instilling in me the importance of being nice to everybody. He'd say, “Be nice to those people you pass going up the ladder, because some of those same people will be there when you're on your way down.” After I got to college, I took his words to heart. I was nice to everybody. Even, especially, the police. I found they were the best friends to have in so many different situations. Because when others would get tickets, or worse, I didn't.

Since college, I've done my best to remain friends with everyone. Everyone I meet, because I never know when I might need to hear some of their experience. I never know when they may be my escape from a situation I can't get out of myself. I'm not talking physically, but mentally.
I spent a lot of time alone in my apartment wondering, waiting, and thinking about how different things would be. It took a Facebook message from one of those old friends to remind me that my love of music wasn't supposed to make me famous, it was supposed to make me happy. He was the key to giving up on my dream of being a famous recording artist and getting back to writing and singing music simply because it was fun.

Since then, my friends have been my escape bridge. When my mind traps me behind enemy lines, their perspective, their experiences, give me more insight on mine, and help me find my way back to me. I've never given up on a friend, and I hope they never give up on me.

My father was, and most times is, my greatest inspiration. He was my bridge out of my head when the thoughts were fire, and I felt my life had burned to the ground. NEVER BURN A BRIDGE YOU MIGHT NEED TO ESCAPE OVER. That's damn right.

I never really understood that phrase. Until about 2008, my long-term relationship had come to an end and I was living for the first time. Well, not the first time, but I was living in an apartment estranged from my then family, my kids and my significant other, who I would later find out, really didn't have my best interests in mind. But, the journey of being in that apartment really, really tied me to my friends. Because I found in them the encouragement, which gave me the strength to try, to move on, to wake up each day and say, you know what, this is the day I got.

The bridge that I speak of, it's like you make these connections with people. Some of them are strangers. Yesterday, I was at a park watching the sunset, and there was this Muslim man who had come back to his blanket, which was all laid out, had like five or six little Tupperware things of food and a thermos, and we started comparing pictures of the sunset. Which turned into about a 40-minute lecture from him about how Muslims view creation, Jesus, religion. To me it was fascinating. I'd never really talked to anyone about Muslim religion, Muslim beliefs. I was surprised to find how the Quran is parallel to the Bible. Meaning that God created the heaven and the earth, God created Adam, and from Adam took a rib and created Eve.

Funny part of the story is, he told me the reason that women bend but don't break is because they were made from the rib of Adam, which is curved. And if you try to straighten them up, if you try to correct them, well like the rib, if you try to push it straight, it’ll break. And I had never heard that perspective before. I thought it was very interesting. Fascinating.

I learned a little something just because I left myself open for the opportunity to speak to someone I didn't know. Now, I don't know if I'll see this guy again, but you know, most friendships start from that first meeting, when you acknowledge each other's presence and you start talking to each other. And when you start talking to each other, you share stories and perspectives. But because you were raised differently, not every solution that worked for you will work for that other person, and not every solution that worked for that other person will work for you. I mean, life is interesting. It's still circumstantial, but we don't necessarily go through the same circumstance the same way at the same time.

Take getting a flat tire. If you've ever had a flat tire, it can be one of the most inconvenient things in the world. But it only gets worse if you don't have a spare, or if you don't have a jack, or roadside assistance, or if your phone has died, so you really can't call anyone. What happens when you're alone? How do you, how do you cope? How do you, how do you do that?

Actually, I'll tell you a great story with my dad because I'll never forget it. He had a TV sales and service shop and pretty much every Saturday of my teenage career, um, every Saturday morning, I, I went to the shop with him and there would be sometimes when we would go on parts runs. Sometimes we had to pick up televisions. Well, that meant we had to drive up to Seattle from Lakewood, where we lived. This one time, we had gotten, like, four televisions that we were going to take back to the shop and put them on the floor before the end of the day. And after having lunch and leaving Seattle, we get just to the end of Boeing Field, and if you're from Seattle, you know kind of where that is. You're heading towards South Center, and you can see that the Boeing Airfield is on your right, and right about the end of the airstrip, the van ran out of gas. Great!! We are now stranded on the side of an interstate with no gas and nobody.

So, Pops, in his infinite wisdom, decided we needed to cross eight lanes of highway, oh, and hop a fence, to get to the houses on the other side of the freeway. Now, Dad was not fast, I was not quick, okay? But, uh, we got across, southbound and northbound traffic, got over the fence, found a path through the little woods that were there, the brambles and stuff, and went to a house. Didn't knock on the first house, knocked on the door of the second house. No one came to the door. So we went to a third house. No one came to the door. We went across the street to a fourth house and the door opened and it was an older white gentleman. We told him what happened and what we were trying to do, but his car didn't work. So what did he do? He called a friend of his. That friend came over with a gas can, took us to the fill in station, the ‘fillin’ station. Then took us to the truck, we gave him back the gas can, and we made it to a gas station and ended up coming home.

Now what does this have to do with burning a bridge, you might say? What would have happened if the person whose car was broken down and couldn't get us a ride also didn't have someone to call? Well, Pops and I would have had to go to another house. And I say this because you never know when you might need the help of someone else. None of us are mind readers, and none of us are future tellers. As brilliant as we humans are, we really don't know what's going to happen to us. So, when you're in a position where you're not sure, I'm not saying you don't know anything, I'm saying you're not sure, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone that you could ask? I mean, nobody has no friends. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone to ask to help you get you out of whatever situation you're in? Sure it would! Nobody wants to go through crap, but you know what, hard points in life are gonna happen. And if you've gotten into an argument with someone or disrespected someone because they didn't agree with you, what happens if the situation you're in is right up that person's alley and you really feel some sort of way about contacting them, or you just don't. Never burn a bridge you might need to escape over sometime.

If you're nice to people, generally, they will be nice to you. If you're not nice to people, generally, they won't be nice to you. It might start out nice, But then they'll figure out that you're a jerk, or an idiot, or a drama queen, or high maintenance, or can't figure out anything by yourself, and they'll make themselves scarce, and not be there when and if you need them.

You know this works in reverse, too. Because there are people who know you. Maybe they disrespect you. Insult you. Do you cut them off? Write them off? Just say, ah, so that's how it is, huh? All right. Peace out, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, whatever. Do you do that? Make them learn the lesson of, oh crap, they might need me someday, and I'm not gonna be there. You know what you put out into this universe, you're gonna get back. You may not recognize what it is that you get back, but you're gonna get something back. Some people call that karma. I like to think of it as karma.

I don't cross a city street against the light. Won't do it. If I, you know, if I can possibly help it, I don't do it. Cause that would be something negative I would put out into the universe that I don't want coming back on me. Case in point. I'm in Atlanta on the Macklemore tour, and I meet a person in the lobby who has a group of friends, and it just happens to be Final Four Weekend in Atlanta, and so I'm hanging out with all these people, well, like five or six, four or five people, from Louisville.
They made it a point to teach me how to say Louisville, not Louis-ville, Louisville. And I'm still not saying it right. Anyway, we were going to go get something to eat and they were going to go to this place that, you know, a lot of other Louisville college folks, we're going to be hanging out at and we get to a street and sure, there's no traffic coming, so a few of them start crossing the street. Okay. And this one lady looks at me, she goes, “Come on, let's go.”, and I go, “mm mm, no, I don't think so.”, “Why not?”, “Well, I haven't got the light.”, “Oh, don't worry about that.”, and about ten seconds, five seconds later, light changes and I walk across the street. And she's there, “…and now we're, now we're way behind these folks, we have to catch up!” she says. And I say, “okay!”, and she turns to start walking, catches a heel on a crack in the sidewalk, and almost falls down. I rush over, “are you okay?”, and she says, “yeah, but dang, I almost fell down!” I said, “yeah, now you know why I don't cross against the light! Karma is always watching.”

It’s true, you never know, you never really know. You think you know, but you don't. People can be the greatest, most available, accurate, and best solution to a problem. Unless somehow you screw up that friendship. Somehow you insult, or ignore, or in some other way, not take care of the relationship with that person. I mean, it doesn't take much. A simple, Hey, what's going on? It's that simple. You thinking about somebody? Going through a memory that you've been through and you think about the person that you were with? Why not send them a text? Why not reach out? Let them know that they are thought of. Cause wouldn't it be nice if somebody reached out and said, “You know what? I was just thinking about you.”

I don't think that's a bad thing to have happen, being somebody else's bridge. Never burn a bridge, you may need to escape over someday. God only knows what's gonna happen to you.

As Grandmaster Flash says in The Message, “A child is born with no state of mind. Blind to the ways of mankind. God is smiling on you, but he's frowning too, because only God knows what you'll go through.”, and that's real deal Holyfield. Holyfield, only God knows what you are going to go through.

Thanks again for listening. Remember you need to do something nice for yourself. Then go do it for someone else. Do that and see how you feel because I don't think you want to feel bad, do you? Until next week, I will see you later!!!