Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

by William Bridges

Moving into your own apartment doesn’t make you a separate, independent individual. But if you are growing into your own individuality right at that time, being out on your own feels huge!

A young person who sets up a “household” at the end of the time of apprenticeship has taken a huge step forward. There are other steps, of course. Launching a long-term relationship with someone else—and, if the individual decides to, conceiving children with that person—helps to establish a young person as a full-scale adult.

From the twenties through the fifties—and sometimes beyond—most modern people conduct the adult “business” of working and raising a family. In so doing, they are filling the role that the ancient Hindus called that of the Householder. This is a time of roles and responsibilities—a time when many modern people are not just “working” but pursuing a “career.” In so doing, they develop expertise in their work as well as a greater understanding of it.

The end of the Apprentice period may last for several years; meanwhile, you try, and reject, several different kinds of work, or sample several different settings in which you could do what you’ve decided to do. The

Similarly, the transitions toward the end of your career are weighted down with the freight of what, in our society, we call “retirement.” It is almost as though you were starting to “retire” a little at a time as the endings that initiate each of the late-career transitions in your work life cause you to let go of bits and pieces of the person you have been up to that point.

The infamous signs of a mid-life crisis—the new cars, the unexpected divorces, and the sudden changes of behavior—are related to the transition that marks the beginning of this new phase, although they suggest that the person in transition is avoiding the real challenge of ending Householding and starting Forest-Dwelling.

Making big changes at this point can easily be distractions from the real business at hand. They are often the signs that one is avoiding transition rather than embracing it.

The Hindus keyed the transition to Forest-Dwelling to the birth of one’s first grandchild—the idea being that this was when the next generation took over the Householder function within the family.

In fact, the transitions that punctuate many people’s careers after the age of forty or forty-five are the unmarked ruins of this natural time of transition. Whether such transitions take the form of a time when everything “goes dead,” a time when things keep going wrong, a time when long-successful strategies suddenly stop working, or a time when the gray fog of depression covers whatever was once bright and interesting, this natural (if often delayed) time of transition starts with an ending, a sense of loss. And after we have acknowledged the ending, the sense of loss is replaced with emptiness, meaninglessness, a feeling that all our accomplishments actually mean very little. We say (if we have the courage to talk about the experience) that our careers aren’t going anywhere; we may wonder whether we’ve been in the wrong career all along; we may consider an early retirement, although we probably at the time lack the funds to pull it off.

We see them as something without sequel, forgetting that they are the first phase of the transition process and a precondition of self-renewal. At the same time, we fail to take them seriously enough. Because they scare us, we try to avoid them.

We all know how the man feels, and yet endings must be dealt with if we are to move on to whatever comes next in our lives. The new growth cannot take root on ground still covered with the old habits, attitudes, and outlooks because endings are the clearing process.

will discuss the five aspects of the natural ending experience: disengagement, dismantling, disidentification, disenchantment, and disorientation.

It seems to be a universal belief among traditional peoples that at times of inner transition people need to be separated from their familiar places in the social order.

In stories of the ancient world, this step of disengagement is a common theme. Christ makes a forty-day journey into the wilderness; Theseus leaves the familiar world of Troetzen for the tests and ordeals of the overland journey to Athens.

Oedipus leaves home to avoid a fate that, as it turns out, he meets along the way. Jonah and Oedipus both find that the first step toward destiny is taken in what they believe to be the opposite direction. And both find that, whatever the circumstances, there is a natural tendency to break with the familiar social matrix at times of life transition.

This view of things grew on her, and she brought it up more frequently, until one day she came in and announced that she had decided the divorce was no random accident in her life. “Any earlier and I wouldn’t have been ready; any later and I’d have been so hopelessly invested in our system that I’d have died when it was broken. Yes, it came just at the right moment.”

Divorces, deaths, job changes, moves, illnesses, and many lesser events disengage us from the contexts in which we have known ourselves. They break up the old cue system that served to reinforce our roles and to pattern our behavior.

is rather that as long as a system is working, it is very difficult for a member of it to imagine an alternative way of life and an alternative identity. But with disengagement, an inexorable process of change begins. Clarified, channeled, and supported, that change can lead toward a development and renewal.

The disengagement can take place in a moment: “I’m leaving! We’re finished! Goodbye!” But the old habits and behaviors and practices that made you feel like yourself can only be “dismantled.” They have to be taken apart a piece at a time.

But there is a parallel and separate process that we don’t hear so much about that is not so much emotional as it is cognitive. It is the one in which people in transition gradually stop thinking of themselves as part of a we and start thinking of themselves as an I.

And as the contractors always warn you, remodeling always takes more time and money than new construction. Good advice in regard to transition, too.

Separated from the old identity and the old situation or some important aspect of it, a person floats free in a kind of limbo between two worlds. But there is still the reality in that person’s head—a picture of the “way things are,” which ties the person to the old world with subtle strands of assumption and expectation. The

One of the most important differences between a change and a transition is that changes are driven to reach a goal, but transitions start with letting go of what no longer fits or is adequate to the life stage you are in.

Whatever it is, it is internal. Although it might be true that you emerge from a time of transition with the clear sense that it is time for you to end a relationship or leave a job, that simply represents the change that your transition has prepared you to make.

It is the internal things that really hold us to the past, and people who try to deal only with externals are people who walk out of relationships, leave jobs, move across the country . . . but who don’t end up significantly different from what and who they were before.

Endings begin with something going wrong.

For one person, an ending may be an event; for another, it may be a state of mind.

The point is that it is important to let yourself or others in transition experience an ending. You are not the first person who ever lost a job (or moved or had heart surgery), but telling you that is of no help.

Endings are, let’s remember, experiences of dying. They are ordeals, and sometimes they challenge so basically our sense of who we are that we believe they will be the end of us.

We have it backwards. Endings are the first, not the last, act of the play.

Take this opportunity to discover what you really want. What do you want, anyway? When the circumstances of our lives box us in, we usually assume that we know what we want but simply cannot get it. “If only I could . . .” The refrain is familiar. In times of transition, however, a distressing change often takes place: The limiting circumstances are part of what ends, and we are no longer held back from doing what we want to do. But now the refrain changes: “If only I knew what I really wanted . .

By understanding how you characteristically suppress your wantings and how to stop doing that. To do these things, try this: Imagine that you are going to get yourself something to eat or drink right now. (Assume for the moment that you can actually have anything you want—all the ordinary problems of cost and supply are taken care of.) Now, stop reading for just a moment and think: “What do I really want to eat or drink right now?”

4. Did you try to remember something good you had eaten recently? 5. Did you try to recall your “favorite food”?

However, most people use some strategy to “come up with an answer.” If you are one of those people, the chances are good that you do the same thing when it comes to far more important wantings about love and work or about what you’re going to do next in your life.

You get into serious difficulty when, in the neutral zone, you don’t let yourself know what you really want out of your life.

It’s overkill to control your behavior by denying that you’re attracted to or interested in something.

Imagine that you are a family friend who has taken on the task of writing the obituary for the local paper or school alumni magazine. What would you write about yourself? Not your life story, but the things you did and didn’t do with the years you had at your disposal.

You know the stuff: date of birth, parents and siblings, education, positions, honors, hobbies, and then some last sentence, “At the time of death he [she] was . . . ” (Was what? Was groping toward a new beginning, was stuck, was miles from home with darkness falling, was running scared, was done with trying to meet the expectations of others at last . . . was what?)

you stand here in the emptiness of the neutral zone, what do you think and feel about the past? What was unlived in that past—what dreams, what convictions, what talents, what ideas, what qualities in you went unrealized? You are at a turning point now.

begin a new chapter. Take a few days to go on your own version of a passage journey.

not am suggesting here that you learn about rituals and patch one together for yourself—only that you go a little further with the natural tendency to withdraw for a time during the neutral zone phase of transition. I am suggesting that you spend a few days alone during which you reflect consciously on the present transition process in your own life.

The simpler and quieter the setting, the more chance you will have to attend to your inner business. Your food should be simple, and your meals should be small. Leave at home the wonderful novel you’ve been meaning to read, and don’t distract yourself with other entertainment. Take along a notebook to jot in, but don’t feel that you have to write anything substantial while you are there. This retreat is a journey into emptiness and a time to cultivate receptivity. The more you leave behind, the more room you have to find something new.

If it appeals to you, keep a vigil during one of your nights—that is, stay awake all night and do nothing more demanding than keeping a fire going or getting something to drink occasionally. The idea is to stay awake, so you’ll want to sit up rather than lie down, and it will help to get up and walk around from time to time.

A word of caution, though. The advice to participate in such a process is not an excuse to do foolhardy things. The midnight hike through the woods might leave you with a whopping case of poison oak or ivy. The lonely swim in the surf might cost you your life. This is a time for doing things that you wouldn’t normally do, but it is not a time to hurt yourself.

There is not some better reaction you could be having to the experience. Whatever you are feeling is you, and you’re there to be alone with that very person.

have been saying, for example, that the order of transition is ending, then neutral zone, then new beginning. But things do not stay lined up in their proper order in many people’s lives.

You see the former when someone “goes dead” at work or around the home. There has been no ending, no disengagement. The old job or the old relationship is intact. But the person is not there. He or she has become emotionally unplugged. Sometimes this happens because a decision has been made inwardly to end the situation. Emotionally, an ending has already taken place, although the outer circumstances remain unchanged. Or it may happen when you let go of an old dream because you finally admit to yourself that it is not going to work. Again, a subtle inner ending takes place, although everything goes on as before on the outside. The neutral zone overlaps with the old life, and you move like a sleepwalker through a role that you once identified with.

It often happens, however, that the external ending and the new beginning stand side-by-side with no room for a neutral space between them. You move from one town to another and the new life begins. Or from one job to another with no time off between them. Or a relationship begins, but there is no real ending to being alone. You are likely to be well into the new beginning before realizing that it is all strange and unreal.

By treating ourselves like appliances that can be unplugged and plugged in again at will or cars that stop and start with the twist of a key, we have forgotten the importance of fallow time and winter and rests in music. We have abandoned a system of dealing with the neutral zone through ritual, and we have tried to deal with personal change as though it were a matter of simple readjustment.9

Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, muttering, “It’ll be no use their putting their heads down and saying, ‘Come up again, dear!’ I shall only look up and say, Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m somebody else—but, oh dear!” cried Alice with a sudden burst of tears, “I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!”10 It is lonely down there—except that there are more people down there than you may realize.