A Better Bridge

“I refuse to buy into this tired narrative, that anyone who doesn’t run with me is a fool.”

Wish I wrote this one – today I’m posting a cover of “A Better Bridge” by Thrice, a band who devoted an entire album to the theme of coming together. This song hit me hard when it came out two years ago, capturing so perfectly the seemingly unstoppable nature of our growing political divide yet with an overpowering optimism that we can turn things around – that, together, we can get past our differences to form a better bridge towards the future.

Lyrics:

It's so hard to understand just where you're coming from
  To try to see things from a different point of view
  Trying not to pigeonhole or simply write you off
  But it's so much simpler if the parody is true

  Yeah it's so easy to believe it's really you

But I refuse to buy into this tired narrative
  That anyone who doesn't run with me is a fool
  And I believe together we can build a better bridge
  That spans the breadth and starts connecting me to you

I’m sick of towing party lines across the great divide
  I’m sick of human hearts reduced to red or blue
  Still often times my thoughts of you are cardboard cutout lies
  It's so much simpler if the parody is true

  It's so easy to believe it's really you
  Yeah it's so easy to believe it's really you

And I refuse to buy into this tired narrative
  That anyone who doesn't run with me is a fool
  And I believe together we can build a better bridge
  That spans the breadth and starts connecting me to you

Why's it so hard to just remember
  That you have a past, a face, a heart, a name?
  Why’s it so hard to just remember that
  That we are less different than we are the same?

But I have to try
  Yeah I have to try

And I refuse to buy into this tired narrative

That anyone who doesn't run with me is a fool

And I believe together we can build a better bridge

That spans the breadth and starts connecting me to you