RE: Burning Bridges

I have wanted to post the quote below on my Facebook wall for some time.
However I and others I have shared it with, think it's one of those "loaded" quotes that can go both ways...
and Facebook is totally different than a blog.
It's easy to tick people off on Facebook and once you do that, things get a little crazy.
On a blog, when you tick people off, "oh well."
People who disagree  here can write a comment. Even when I disagree with the person writing, I post the comment as long as it does not contain a four letter word, name-calling, or a death threat. (I forward the latter onto the authorities)

To burn a bridge, one might think, is a horrible thing.
I know for most of my life,  when I thought of a burning bridge, I didn't see that as a positive, which is why the quote below first caught my attention.
I think of the history behind the bridge: the hands, years, blood, sweat and tears it took to build it.
Every time I cross a bridge, be it an old country one...
a modern floating one...
or a massive metal mega-structure, like the Tacoma Narrows...
I am humbled. Truly. Bridges are an inspiring thing for me.
I  am profoundly moved by the collaborative human effort it took to envision, design, fund, build and maintain that bridge.
I have even seen bridges blasted, then carved, through huge mountains of slid rock. They are the stuff that unites or divides us.

The quote below, however, made me think twice about everything I thought about bridges and the burning of them. Maybe it's not always horrible, I have decided, to burn a bridge. Especially when an army is coming after you from the other end with Uzi's in the middle of dark and dangerous jungle.  Burning the bridge could keep the enemy at bay and light the way to freedom.

What I wonder is if I could ever do it.
If I could be the one to actually burn the bridge down completely...
to permanently close the portal from one good, decent human being to another.
In the past, I would think myself an arsonist for doing that.

I have witnessed people ahead of me take a match... a lighter... a torch... to bridges that others, myself included, attempt to rebuild more times than I care to count. And with the writing of this post and the addition of the quote below today, I realize now... I get it!
It took me a real long time to figure this one out...
longer than some people reading this have been on the planet.

Sometimes, bridges are burned just because people get so heated up their negative energy is combustible, a firestorm.
Other times, the bridges are be burned to light the way to a more positive path.

Whatever the reason, I prefer the bridge be left alone. It is, in my opinion,  one of the last bastions of humanity.