Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge Again: Ahmed Best on Vulnerability and Shared Stories

A Father-and-Son Trip to New York

Best explains that a few years earlier, when his son was nine (he is sixteen now), the boy asked for a father-and-son trip to New York City. Best had told him many stories about performing in Stomp, growing up in New York, living in Brooklyn, and biking over the bridge into the city. They stayed in Bed-Stuy, and one day his son said he wanted to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Best describes the walk for anyone who has never made it. A concrete path leads up to wooden slats, which lead to the cables he calls "the spiderweb" and the arches that frame the city. He calls it the city he loves and the city he grew up in.

Freezing on the Wooden Slats

When they reached the concrete path, his son ran as fast as he could toward the wooden section, and Best ran after him. When Best reached the wood, he froze. His son turned around and said, "Come on, dad," and Best could not move.

In that moment, Best says, he realized he had not walked across the bridge in twenty years. His son had made him face what he calls his biggest shame and his biggest fear.

What Happened Twenty Years Earlier

Twenty years before, Best says, he thought this bridge would be the last thing he would ever see. He had expected his life to change for the better. Instead, when Star Wars came out, it changed for the worse. He faced an intense amount of pressure from the world, and at 26 years old he did not want to live anymore. He says it was the only time in his life when he could not see the future.

Now, twenty years later, he was looking at his little boy saying "come on dad." He recalls telling himself that it was just a step, that he had been stepping his whole life, that he had performed in Stomp and could surely take one step onto the wood. He was so scared that he compares it to standing in front of Godzilla and being unable to move.

Seeing Everything This Time

Then he took a step, and another, and kept walking. He knew he was approaching the spot where he had wanted to end his life. He says that on the night it happened, he did not remember seeing anything: not the Statue of Liberty, not Brooklyn, not Manhattan. This time, he saw everything.

He grabbed his son, held him, and took a photograph. All he could think was that twenty years earlier he almost didn't have him. He calls his son the love of his life and the person he is "entangled to the most."

Telling the World

Best says he had not believed his story mattered compared with the rest of the world. He held on to it for twenty years, kept it inside, and was not vulnerable. Then he tweeted the picture and told the world what had happened, because he could not hold on to it anymore and had to let it go.

He says the post went everywhere, with millions of people retweeting it, and that he cannot describe how much love he received in return. Meanwhile, his son looked up, touched his face, and said, "Daddy." When Best answered, his son asked whether he could get something to eat because he was hungry. They walked across the rest of the bridge together.

Entanglement Through Vulnerability

Best says that to this day he remains "entangled" with the many people who told him they had the same story as he did. They shared those stories with him because he had shared his vulnerability first.

He ends with his broader lesson. Telling an emotional story, he says, is just the tip of the iceberg and only the beginning. You need to add intense pressure to your "emotional engine" so that it increases your vulnerability, until you have no choice but to be who you really are.