Bridge

Bridge

Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I had a conversation with my friend's boyfriend. He was almost superhuman at maths. He solved the most difficult mathematical problems with such ease and speed that you would never believe it was possible unless you had seen it with your own eyes.

I loved maths. And because he was so exceptionally good at it, he had authority in everything he talked about, at least in my eyes.

One day he told us that the coolest place on Earth was in southern Japan, where there was an incredibly long bridge. It was so long that it curved with the Earth's surface, and from it, he said, you could actually see that the Earth was round. I think he even mentioned the name of the place.

To impress us even more, he drew the Japanese character for bridge and told us he had learnt it using his own memorisation technique and would remember it for the rest of his life.

I was impressed, to say the least.

On top of mathematics, Japanese characters that you could remember forever? That was extraordinary.

Years passed. The boy became my friend's husband. I moved to Japan and learnt Japanese myself.

I can't say I thought about him from time to time, but I think that conversation had left an imprint somewhere deep in my mind.

Years later, I met my friend and her husband during one of my trips back home. We were talking about life, children, and everything in between when I suddenly remembered that conversation from years earlier. I asked him whether he still remembered the character.

He didn't even remember the conversation, let alone the character.

"How could you?" was my first thought, though I kept it to myself.

We continued talking about everything and nothing at the same time, but the question kept echoing in my mind.

Later that night, lying in bed, I suddenly understood why that conversation had stayed with me for so many years.

Back then, in my teenage years, without knowing it, he had set me a standard.

A standard of possibility.

If he could learn Japanese so easily, then somewhere in my mind that quietly became, "One can learn Japanese." Something I had previously considered impossible to achieve in a single lifetime.

He expanded my horizon of what was possible.

It didn't matter that it had been only a brief conversation, or that he didn't even remember it years later.

It became a bridge into a bigger reality for me.

I built the bridge myself.

But he made me believe it could be built.

For that, I will always be grateful.