The Bridge That Bends Survives the Storm

"What happens if an engineer builds a completely rigid bridge?" Alan Watts, one of the most influential interpreters of Eastern philosophy for Western audiences, asked in 1959. "If they had no give, no yielding, they'd come crashing down."

The bridge would collapse. You would collapse if you were equally rigid. If you pretend to be completely invulnerable, you reveal your doubt about your own strength. Those who can allow themselves moments of weakness access what is really the greatest strength. The ability to bend without breaking.

In his teachings, Yogi Ramacharaka writes that "resistance is weakness, while adaptation and harmony are strength." In other words, the wise person doesn't fight the current. They learn to navigate it.

If you were to watch the Golden Gate bridge during a storm, you’d see that it doesn't fight the wind. It dances with it. It sways left and right, up and down. The structure maintains its essential purpose while yielding to forces beyond its control. A few feet of sway prevents total destruction.

Your expectations about how life should go are like building a rigid bridge. When the winds of change blow, and rest assured they will, these fixed ideas snap under pressure.

But when you learn what the bridge knows, when you discover what both Watts and the Yogis taught, you find the flexible strength of swaying with circumstances while keeping your foundation intact. You adapt to the changing winds of life.

The bridge that bends survives the storm. The person who adapts thrives through chaos.