Bridge to Terabithia - Susan Watkins

(Reflection on a Topic of Choice)

"See, you have to believe it, and you hate it. I don't have to believe it, and I think it's beautiful."

- Leslie Burke, Bridge to Terabithia

How true. Isn't that something we've all experienced at one time or another? Being forced to do things sometimes makes us lose sight of the inherent value and beauty in them. I remember that when I was younger, I loathed running in gym class. I wasn't good at it, couldn't reach the standards set for me, and always felt bad about myself. I thought it was boring and pointless. As soon as I got out of gym class, all I could think of was how glad I was that I would never have to run again. Then though, a few months later, I needed to get away from my house so I went for a walk. It turned into a jog, and I experienced the freedom and joy that comes from being outside and in rhythmic motion. I'm still not very good at running, but now that it is my choice, I really enjoy it.

Here, Leslie refers to her friends' point of view on church. Jesse hates church because he thinks it's boring and doesn't like the image of the vengeful God which is always presented to him, but Leslie's first visit there fills her with wonder and curiosity about the message of Jesus. Jesse can't understand, but Leslie does-- she has no obligation to like or dislike it, so she is free to make her own decision.

Even now, in college, most of us still feel pressured to believe or do things we don't want to. Believe this, think that, major in this, get a career in that... we are pushed around by any number of things including family, friends, money, circumstances, whatever. We feel that somehow we are being limited, restrained, trapped-- and so everything about our situation starts to take on the look of a prison cell. Just like Jesse, we begin to rebel and reject those things which unto themselves might not be bad at all, but to us seem like iron bars.

How do we free ourselves of this? We don't have Leslie's advantage of never having been in this situation before; most of us live in it constantly. However, Leslie has something else that we do share with her-- imagination and the ability to change her perspective. Leslie can take a boring old truck or a rotting tree house and imagine them into mystic ruins and brilliant castles. She can also take a bad situation with the school bully and look at it in a new way, finding the good in a mean girl and reaching out to her. If we were to take a lesson from her, most of us would find our lives changed drastically. If we let go of the "have to's" of our life and start looking at where we are from a fresh perspective, attentive to opportunity and adventure, we might found our lives looking more and more like a fairy tale each day. We all have our dragons to face, but we're hoping and searching for that happily ever after.