Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

“Please tell me the story of your life in fifteen minutes.”

Our lives no longer follow the traditional, linear path.

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.

Every now and then—and for many of us more frequently than that—we get hit by a blunter, more explosive force of change. These are the signature events that shape or, more accurately, reshape our lives, often in ways we can’t imagine and with an intensity we can’t control. These are the wolves that upend our fairy tales.

personal versus collective and voluntary versus involuntary.

We manage to get through many of these disruptors with only minor upset to our lives. We adjust, draw on our loved ones, recalibrate our life stories.

Life is in the transitions. His point is even more true today: We can’t ignore these central times of life; we can’t wish or will them away. We have to accept them, name them, mark them, share them, and eventually convert them into a new and vital fuel for remaking our life stories.

Looking back over your life story in a slightly different way, what shape embodies your life?

Life is in the transitions as much as in the terms connected.