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journey of transformation.
change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological.
death-and-rebirth process of transition.
From place to place and job to job, Americans kept moving. Drawn forward by the faith that better things lay just beyond the horizon, they lived a life marked by frequent transitions.
Many Americans have lost faith that the transitions they are going through are really getting them somewhere.
The subject of this book is the difficult process of letting go of an old situation, of suffering the confusing nowhere of in-betweenness, and of launching forth again in a new situation. Because those three phases are going to be so critical to what we are discussing, let me reiterate: all transitions are composed of (1) an ending, (2) a neutral zone, and (3) a new beginning.
(Rule number one: when you’re in transition, you find yourself coming back in new ways to old activities.)
the three main similarities seemed to be that we had all experienced (1) an ending, followed by (2) a period of confusion and distress, leading to (3) a new beginning, for those who had come that far.
They congratulate you on your new life, but I have to mourn the old life alone.”
rule number two: every transition begins with an ending.
It is frightening to discover that some part of us is still holding on to what we used to be, for it makes us wonder whether the change was a bad idea.
What you bring with you to a transitional situation is the style you have developed for dealing with endings.
Blameless Ones,
Rule number three: although it is advantageous to understand your own style of endings, some part of you will resist that understanding as though your life depended on it.
However you learned to deal with them, endings are the first phase of transition. The second phase is a time of lostness and emptiness before life resumes an intelligible pattern and direction. The third phase is that of beginning anew.
So we have rule number four: first there is an ending, then a beginning, and an important empty or fallow time in between.
Sometimes the distresses involve new beginnings that require unforeseen endings; sometimes they involve endings with no new beginning in sight.
transition from dependency to separateness and independence.
cane bespeaks not simply the coming of physical decrepitude but a cluster of changes that includes suffering and deepened insight and disengagement from an outlived way of doing and being.
we think of people as we think of cars: having times of production and function—and then, unfortunately, of falling apart.
Body As machine
two great developmental shifts fan out over the lifetime: the first involves an end to old dependencies and the establishment of the person as a separate social entity; the second involves movement beyond that separateness to something more complex, to a deeper sense of interrelatedness.
“entering the adult world.”
forging strong new interpersonal relationships and thereby exploring your capacity for intimacy.
Second thoughts can turn one’s thirties into a difficult time.
people find life moving in alternating periods of stability and change.
Oscar Wilde hits home: “The gods have two ways of dealing harshly with us—the first is to deny us our dreams, and the second is to grant them.”
Carl Jung emphasized the same point: We might compare masculinity and femininity… to a particular store of substances of which, in the first half of life, unequal use is made. A man consumes his large supply of masculine substance and has left over only the smaller amount of feminine substance, which he must now put to use. It is the other way round with a woman; she allows her unused supply of masculinity to become active.9
So in the end, the homeward journey of life’s second half demands three things: first, that we unlearn the style of mastering the world that we used to take us through the first half of life; second, that we resist our own longings to abandon the developmental journey and refuse the invitations to stay forever at some attractive stopping place; and third, that we recognize that it will take real effort to regain the inner “home.”
it is also a time when we are surrounded by distractions.
Relationships are always structured by unspoken agreements, although people are seldom conscious of it.
This process of renegotiation must take place many times during a long-term relationship if it is to stay vital and provide both partners with the setting for their continued development.
What does work is for the partner who is aware of the transition and its implications for a relationship to begin exploring alone the question of what is ending in a relationship and what to do about it. More often than not, it turns out that the ending is not some external situation
Rebalancing the Scales:
What is it time to let go of in my own life right now? 2. What is standing backstage, in the wings of my life, waiting to make its entrance?
Householder. This is a time of roles and responsibilities—
inner search and discovery that they called the Forest Dweller phase.
understand the great alternating current of life, the rhythm whereby being is followed by letting go, which is followed by emptiness, which is followed by renewed energy and purpose, which is followed again by being.
He also saw that these ceremonial occasions consisted of three phases, which he called separation, transition, and incorporation.
disengagement, an inexorable process of change begins. Clarified, channeled, and supported, that change can lead toward a development and renewal.
slowly dismantle or unpack your relationship to the person, or the relationship or identity that you have lost.
It starts by making an ending and destroying what used to be. Then there is the time when it isn’t the old way any more, but not yet the new way, either. Some dismantling is still going on, but so is some new building.
most people in transition have the experience of no longer being quite sure who they are.
need to loosen the bonds of the person we think we are so that we can go through a transition toward a new identity.
The discovery that in some sense one’s world is indeed no longer real is what is meant by disenchantment.
Disorientation is meaningful, but it isn’t enjoyable.
Disorientation affects not only our sense of space but also our sense of time.
The story of Oedipus is thus a symbolic representation of what goes on in our lives when we seek to hold on to an old and outlived way of being in the world.
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.
The transition itself begins with letting go of something that you have believed or assumed, some way you’ve always been or seen yourself, some outlook on the world or attitude toward others.
Endings are, let’s remember, experiences of dying.
