"Much as we may wish to make a new beginning, some part of us resists doing so as though we were making the first step toward disaster"
About this Quote
Bridges pins a quietly vicious truth to the page: the hardest opponent of change is rarely the world, but the alarm system inside your own ribs. The sentence turns on a paradox - “much as we may wish” versus “some part of us resists” - capturing how desire and dread can occupy the same body without resolving into a clean decision. The phrasing “as though” matters. He’s not claiming the new beginning is disastrous; he’s diagnosing a reflex, the mind’s talent for treating unfamiliarity as threat.
Coming from a soldier, the line reads less like self-help and more like field intelligence. Armies run on beginnings: new postings, new offensives, new routines after loss. But they also run on habit, drilled obedience, and the protective superstition that yesterday’s pattern is safer than tomorrow’s improvisation. Bridges is attentive to the moment just before movement, when the first step carries an outsized symbolic charge. “The first step toward disaster” isn’t about consequences alone; it’s about narrative. We fear not merely failing, but inaugurating a story we can’t control.
The subtext is unsentimental: resistance is not always cowardice; it’s a survival instinct doing its job in the wrong context, misfiring in peacetime or in personal life. Bridges offers no pep talk, just a clear-eyed map of the inner barricade - and, implicitly, a soldier’s counsel: expect that barricade, name it, step anyway.
Coming from a soldier, the line reads less like self-help and more like field intelligence. Armies run on beginnings: new postings, new offensives, new routines after loss. But they also run on habit, drilled obedience, and the protective superstition that yesterday’s pattern is safer than tomorrow’s improvisation. Bridges is attentive to the moment just before movement, when the first step carries an outsized symbolic charge. “The first step toward disaster” isn’t about consequences alone; it’s about narrative. We fear not merely failing, but inaugurating a story we can’t control.
The subtext is unsentimental: resistance is not always cowardice; it’s a survival instinct doing its job in the wrong context, misfiring in peacetime or in personal life. Bridges offers no pep talk, just a clear-eyed map of the inner barricade - and, implicitly, a soldier’s counsel: expect that barricade, name it, step anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | New Beginnings |
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