Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

by Bruce Feiler

Life is in the transitions.

Lupus in fabula means “the wolf in the fairy tale.”

A Short History of Myth,

life as a series of stages.

five successive stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

It’s the should problem all over again. You should be feeling this at this specific time in your life; if you don’t, there’s something wrong with you.

Life is a series of passages.

This wasn’t the life I expected, but it was the life I got.

four seasons of a man’s life.

“There is a single, most frequent age at which each period begins,” he went on: seventeen, forty, sixty, and eighty.

Subtitled Predictable Crises of Adult Life, Passages is the bible of the linear life.

Sheehy said all adults go through the same four stages: the Trying Twenties; the Catch-30 around your thirtieth birthday; the Deadline Decade of your thirties; and the Age 40 Crucible.

It does not unfold in passages, stages, phases, or cycles. It is nonlinear—and

“I Feel Like the Theme of My Life Has Been Change”

Change is life. It’s what keeps life interesting.”

“Nonlinearity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.”

fluid, fickle, changeable, adaptable.

The time has come to fix that. Since our world is nonlinear, we should acknowledge that our lives are nonlinear, too. Just as the cyclical life was replaced by the linear life, the linear life is being replaced by the nonlinear life.

Nonlinearity suggests that instead of resisting upheavals and uncertainties like these, we should accept them. Yours is not the only life that seems to be following its own inscrutable path. Everyone else’s is, too.

We’re all the clouds floating over the horizon, the swirl of cream in the coffee, the jagged dash of lightning. And we’re not aberrations because of this; we’re just like everything else.

Acknowledging this reality is both a rebuke to centuries of conventional thinking that imposed order on our life stories where there was none, and an invitation to see in the seeming randomness of our everyday lives patterns that are far more thrilling than we could ever imagine. The fundamental ingredient of those patterns—the

the base unit of the nonlinear life—is the everyday events that reshape our lives. I cal...

disruptor is an event or experience that interrupts the everyday flow of one’s life.

the story lines are love, identity, beliefs, work, and body.

THE AVERAGE PERSON GOES THROUGH ONE DISRUPTOR EVERY 12–18 MONTHS

We have linear expectations but nonlinear realities.

We’re all comparing ourselves to an ideal that no longer exists and beating ourselves up for not achieving it.

The should train has slowed. Each of us can make our choices and decide what brings us peace.

The difference between success and failure—between a life of fulfillment and a life of frustration—is how well you manage the challenge of making meaning in your life.

“The Fear of Staying Was Greater Than the Fear of Leaving”

What do these events have in common? I identified two essential variables: personal versus collective and voluntary versus involuntary.

The Artist’s Way, a step-by-step guide to discovering your inner creativity.

The first is timing.

The second factor is that the disruptor falls at the end of a long string of disruptors;

I’ve come to believe, are connected. It’s as if our immune system becomes compromised by one disruptor so that when another one, two, or three come along, our entire identity gets the flu.

What is it that gives me meaning and how does that influence the story of my life?

What kind of person do I want to be? What story do I want to tell? What gives me meaning?

Our varied sources of meaning and our multiple personal stories are more aligned than many of us realize.

I, too, will have to die. “What troubled me then,” he later wrote, “as it has done throughout my life, was not the fear of dying, but the question of whether the transitory nature of life might destroy its meaning.”

“In some respects it is death itself that makes life meaningful.”

Man’s Search for Meaning

“You do not have to suffer to learn, but if you don’t learn from suffering . . . then your life becomes truly meaningless.”

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

“Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life,”

The “central concept of human psychology is meaning,” wrote Jerome Bruner. And the central task of every individual is to make your own meaning. There is no single formula.

we identified three key ingredients of a well-balanced life. Let’s call them the ABCs of meaning. The A is agency—autonomy, freedom, creativity, mastery; the belief that you can impact the world around you. The B is belonging—relationships, community, friends, family; the people that surround and nurture you. The C is cause—a calling, a mission, a direction, a purpose; a transcendent commitment beyond yourself that makes your life worthwhile.

The first is our me story—the one in which we’re the hero, the doer, the creator; we exercise agency and, in return, feel fulfilled. The next is our we story—the one in which we’re part of a community, a family, a team; we belong to a group and, in turn, feel needed. The third is our thee story—the one in which we’re serving an ideal, a faith, a cause; we give of ourselves to others and, by extension, feel part of something larger.

When our sources of meaning are in balance, our lives are in balance. When they’re out of balance, our lives are out of balance.

As it turns out, the buckets correspond well to the ABCs of meaning and to three primary stories we tell ourselves. Those who chose lines tend to be more focused on their agency; they’re more work- and achievement-oriented. Their me story comes first. Those who chose circles tend to be more focused on belonging; they’re more relationship-oriented. Their we story is primary. Those who chose stars tend to be more cause focused; they’re more oriented toward their beliefs, saving the world, or serving others. Their thee story is paramount.

A Is for Agency