Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Bridge of Deaths by MCV Egan : Peace Blitz! 73rd anniversary of the crash of the G-AESY


The Bridge of Deaths
Living in South Africa, I've seen the last part of the Apartheid regime and the fight for freedom, as a woman, a sister, a daughter and a human I have seen enough to know that I am going to have days that I am blue and days of walking on sunshine.
So I needed to come up with a topic with peace in it for this blog. I had multiple choices, but not the unique voice I wanted.  So a few days after agreeing to the blog hop, I walked into a mall.  In the atrium of the mall a few tables have been set out, around these, children. The task at hand; to build a scale model bridge.  I looked at the schematic and the photo of the bridge they were building and was immediately reminded of the blog hop.  Amused, I stood and watched them. 
The exercise was to get children involved and interested in engineering.  They were provided with preset pieces that had to be assembled into a bridge according to the schematic provided.  It was obvious that they spent some time engrossed in this task at that stage.  Some groups was much further along with their bridge than others.  Watching them, it became clear that this is a group activity, and where members in the group were slacking or over achieving, it turned out that the bridges were not being built.  I also noticed that the bridge pieces were perfect puzzle pieces.  I, with no interest or knowledge of engineering would be able to assemble this impressive bridge in what I guessed would be 20 minutes.  It is simply building a puzzle and gluing the parts together. 
Strangely enough, none of the children saw this, they were approaching their task from an engineering point of view and thus they managed to over complicate things.  I walked away and a few hours later, I passed them again.  Same children, now very frustrated, building what they figured to be a very complicated bridge.
I walked away giggling and slowly the voice of this blog came to me.  In life, war is a complicated way of solving mostly simple problems.  If you refuse to look at a task, problem, relationship from several perspectives, you probably never will see that a very simple solution is at hand.  Going into a situation with preset ideas and information, limits this ability to look beyond the obvious to alternate points of views. 
On a smaller scale, within relationships etc. it might be prudent to simply try and take a step back, to see if it is possible to address whatever issue is at hand from a perspective not your own, especially if what you are doing is obviously not working. 
On a smaller level still, building a bridge from an engineering perspective while you could approach it as a puzzle piece is daft.  But these children were made to believe that the bridge they were building needed to be an engineering feat, that this scale model needed to adhere to rules and physical laws.  So they were totally blinded to the fact that if they simply construct it, their task would have been at an end and they would have been able to win a nice prize.  But they never saw it!
So in life, this is my advice; do not complicate things, not even complicated things.  Simplify and relax.  Build a bridge with others, it is much simpler to glue something together with 3 sets of hands than with only one. Also, it will be done much better and much more professionally. 
Do not burn the bridges you have built.
Do not step on it without remembering how much effort it took.
Do not forget who helped you built it and most of all;
Never forget that those who did not help or could not help, need a bridge as well. 
So grant them access but do not let them desecrate what you have built.   
In this way, I really do believe, we all will manage to live in harmony.


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23 comments:

  1. I don't know if we can ever reach world peace but we should strive to do this.It is a difficult task due to so much difference in all countries' political views,culture,and religion.

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  2. World peace can be achieved if people really want it

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  3. Peace should be such an easy thing to achieve, but so much war and fighting comes from too many people thinking they have the right to do something they dont have the right to do. Pay it forward, do something nice for someone and just maybe you can inspire them to do something nice for someone else, it's not world peace but it's a beginning of something better :)

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  4. that was lovely and it the children of the future that we need to get to learn about peace

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  5. And it should be easy, we needlessly complicate things. Thank you for stopping by guys, have your friends hop on over.

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  6. I will share & spread the word. Peace!
    Diane M. Haynes

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  7. In order to achieve peace as a world we must learn to teach our children better . Free them from handed down prejudice. Allow them to forgive and not judge people based on anything but merit.

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  8. I enjoyed your post. Good points!

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  9. I read and re-read...I loved that you even found a bridge...I love it and the words that resound I shared on FB and I will share again..In life, war is a complicated way of solving mostly simple problems....

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  10. Education is the solution to all problems no matter how complex they might be. Take any world issue and if you boil it down enough the cure will always be some form of education. Education will someday lead to world peace.

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  11. world peace would be awesome, but people are to greedy and ready to fight for it to really happen. this is one case i hope i'm wrong!

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  12. That is an AWESOME way of thinking about it. I agree and think humans over complicate everything in one way or another. You are right, so many problems could be fixed by following our Mothers words "Slow down take a deep breath and each look at it from the others stand point, then look at it from how outsiders would see it. Now solve your own problems!"

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  13. Very well said, and the experiment was brilliant! Any group project tends to bring people unfamiliar with one another together, and those that are familiar are torn apart.

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  14. Wanda, I really enjoyed your analogy, especially about making things more complicated than they have to be. Sharing your bridge but not allowing them to desecrate it is profound. Thanks for writing this post.

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  15. Such a great post and so true!! I remember learning a little acronym in high school: K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple, Stupid. :) As irreverent as it sounds, it makes sense even more to me now, when I've come to realize that I've often over-complicated everything in my life and tried to be superwoman when I'm (gasp) not. In my case, all that stress added up to clinical depression, which I shared in my post today. http://mystiparker.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-journey-to-inner-peace.html

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  16. Wonderful post!
    We can all make life so very complicated sometimes whilst the simplest of solutions are staring us the face. I often think it can be a personal choice we don't always realise we are making.

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  17. I think world peace would be fantastic, unfortunately with religious differences that cannot be overcome, I do not see that happening in our lifetime.

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  18. This is an interesting analogy that leaves a lot to think about. How many times have we been blinded by what we perceive as a very complex problem when in reality it could have been solved very easily by some fresh eyes... food for thought, indeed.

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  19. Thank you guys for this amazing response. Like K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid. May sound flippant but it really is true.

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  20. Love your post on peace. Well done! Great giveaway as well! :D

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  21. World Peace would be a miracle to all of us, it will never happen in any generation for the foreseeable future, I don't think, Thankyou for an awesome giveaway x x

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  22. Finally, I find this blog after hearing so much about it! You may have seen my signs. They say :SLOW CHILD AT PLAY.

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