Thus titled, is a letter Richard Bach writes to his younger self in chapter 2 of The Bridge Across Forever. It reminded me of how we constantly tell ourselves that we wish we knew then what we know now. We’d always be able to handle younger situations better with our older wisdom neh? But I guess that’s just the point. We’d never learn the lesson if things happened that way. Someone asks Richard how he is going to send a letter to 20 years ago? He replies that we all know that at some point time travel will be invented, and when it happens, we’ll have nothing ready to send back in time. So he was concentrating right now on the package and will worry about the delivery later. Amusing.
Anyways that’s not the point of my post. The book I’m reading right now is. Once I had read Jonathan Livingston Seagull when I was 17, I was hooked. A Bach addict, so to say. I’ve read Illusions, the One, the Messiah’s Handbook and many more. But the one book my 17 year old self was really looking for was the one I managed to find this week, purely by chance at Barefoot, 12 years after my search began. Bach believed in soulmates. And he was on a quest to find his. The Bridge Across Forever is the semi-autobiographical tale of how he meets and marries her. Can you imagine with what vigour the my 17 year old self searched every bookstore in Colombo for it? Now its my slightly jaded self whose reading the book, but since I finally managed to find it, I thought, what the heck. I’ve only managed to get through 9 chapters of its 49, but I must admit that it isn’t as cheesy as I thought it would be.
But I need to add to this story. In 1997, when I first came to know of the existence of this book. Richard Bach and his soulamte, Leslie Parish had been married for 20 years. I was amazed. You know, you hear these stories as a little girl about how some people rarely ever get to meet their soul mates and even if they do it only lasts a fleeting moment, or something as god-awfully corny like that. A few years later, as a working girl, I was online and was reading up on the Bachs and was punched really hard in the gut. They had divorced. So now a doubly jaded I, am reading The Bridge Across Forever. The dash of scepticism as I turn each page increases, I smirk a bit, but I still can’t shake the fact that what I’m reading, I find interesting. Even amusing. A few reluctant laughs escape my throat now and again. Hmmm.
You see, the whole concept of soulmates, even in my jaded kinda view is limited to a piece of fiction now. It’s a classic called Wuthering Heights. You may have heard of it. 
The only reason that still holds true for me is probably because it IS fiction. So its an image that has been preserved with no one being able to tarnish it. In the real world, everything’s a tad tarnished, is it not?
Anyway. I’ve only read 9 chapters, like I said. Let me get to the end of my 12 year search and I’ll tell you if I’ve changed my mind.
In the meanwhile, let me leave you with a tiny excerpt from Chapter 1 that caught my attention :
Why should it be that the most advanced of people, whose teachings, twisted into religions, last for centuries, why should it be that they have always been alone?
Why never do we see radiant wives or husbands or miraculous equals with whom they share their adventures and their love? They are surrounded by their disciples and their curious, these few we so admire, they are pressed by those who come to them for healing and light. But how often do we find their soulmates, glorious and powerful beloveds right close by? Sometimes? Once in a while?
I swallowed, throat suddenly dry.
Never.
The most advanced people, I thought, they’re the ones most alone!
Barack Hussein Obama?
I think I read about 6 chapters in that book sometime back. Want to read it again but I think I lost it. Did enjoy those few chapters though..
Happy reading..
Dd – very funny!
Unsilent – Barefoot should have another copy if you want to get it finish it. So far upto 13 chapters. He’s finally met Leslie. Hmph.
“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”
– Rudyard Kipling
“I’m a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone;
I’m a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own…
Not for me the other dogs, running by my side,
Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide.
O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best,
Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!”
– Irene Rutherford Mcleod
“There lives one lone wolf of the battlefield, and he hunts not with the pack.”
– US Marine sniper manual
We’re always told that the best are run alone, to a different drummer. And it’s true. The best are often lonely, tortured individuals — from Jesus Christ to Jim Morrison. Whether by choice or from their inability to form lasting relationships, I guess they channel energies that a partner would sap into whatever venture they put their minds to.
Interestingly, four of Britain’s most revolutionary military leaders — Richard the Lionheart, TE Lawrence, Paddy Mayne, and Orde Wingate were solitary men. The first three were probably secretly homosexual (an unacceptable trait at the time), and the fourth incapable of social intimacy (though he did marry).
Wow.. beautiful excerpt!
David, nicely put!
Makuluwo – thanks.
Have you read any of Bach’s stuff?
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul. Judy Garland
I had to give a talk Feb. 9th and decided on amore’, love. I have quoted Richard Bock a number of times while teaching including one of my favorite in a short flying book from a chapter called Death in the Afternoon. In my talk I wanted to use a couple of the passages of how love goes awry from “The Bridge Across Forever” and also in “One”. In doing the research, I found out Richard had divorced his soulmate Leslie after 20 years. They said it was amicable and they remain friends. That sounds plausible but if you read the books you will see the truth. You don’t squeeze love out of a turnip. People felt he was a Hypocrite.
In the “Bridge”, Richard has once again shown how much of a narcissist he is by leaving Leslie when she is ill to go on a date. She writes one of the most beautiful letters laying out the problem of their relationship and how Richard can’t get there. In the “One”, they visit their alternate selves and in one chapter Richard mentally traps his alternate self into seeing he is being the a__ he really is. In his book running from safety he finally is able to get a glimpse of just how self centered he really is when he sees his inner child is as furious with him as everyone else that tries to have a loving relationship. If you want to learn about love in the world, Reread the books only this time read it from Leslie Parrish’s position. She told him over and over that abandonment is her deepest pain. That all she wanted in love was reliability, For someone to be there. Narcissist won’t do it. Richard won’t really love, won’t sacrifice HIS comfort for another’s. Richards’s thing is freedom because he never got free from his childhood and projects it on the world covering it in his “Philosophy”. In “One” he talks about hiding behind his words. How true. Especially that after 20 years he divorced Leslie, Never dealt with his 6 kids till they were adults, Never really trusted. In the letter Leslie wrote, she accuses him of only liking the openings in a relationship. It’s where he can put on his show, His Illusion. And he selling it like Mesmer was a hypnotist.
Leslie is the one with the secrets. Read her surviving an a–h—. Her statements are jewels.
[...] I was 17 which I found a few months ago? I started reading it and even quoted a part of it for you here. Since then I haven’t quite been able to read it until my many journeys to Unawatuna came about. [...]