Sublime

Our lives no longer follow the traditional, linear path.

coding each story for fifty-seven different variables.

A teacher of students with special needs, Sara had observed that the children she worked with seemed better able to navigate their lives the more they knew about their family’s history.

The second biggest category was personal and voluntary.

We are called upon to answer life’s ultimate questions: What kind of person do I want to be? What story do I want to tell? What gives me meaning?

What I soon discovered is that a host of unprecedented forces are reshaping contemporary life—technological, political, spiritual, sexual—yet the techniques we use to make meaning of our lives have not kept up. We’re going through transitions more frequently, but our tool kit for handling them has not changed to keep pace.

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

Our belief systems may be even more fluid than our identities.

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