Transitions don't mean we're broken

Writers are natural eavesdroppers. It’s not that we’re purposefully nosy or rude; it’s simply that the conversations underway at nearby tables are often far more interesting than the one taking place at our own.

Two weeks ago, for instance, Jim and I were out for breakfast. While he poured over the sports page and I engrossed myself in the Jumble, a young couple took the table next to ours. They were students enrolled at the nearby university, using pancakes as a platform to get acquainted. I was quickly struck by the exchange taking place inches away. The young man was especially enthused to tell his pretty date details of his family and anecdotes from his upbringing. But it was she and her idealistic aspirations for her future who captured my ears and made it increasingly difficult to get six, six-letter words unscrambled before our waitress would deliver my eggs.

The auburn haired woman seated on the same bench as me told her date she didn’t want to be one of those people who at age thirty or, God-forbid, age forty, decided they didn’t like what they were doing with their life and had to change. She was determined to plan better, she told her suitor; she would be absolutely sure about her future before stepping even one foot into a post-graduation career. There would be no crisis looming for her in her middle years. It was all a matter of careful planning she told him.

I smiled as I refilled my coffee cup.

In my study on life transitions, I’ve learned that everyone should expect, at the minimum, two transition periods in life. The first transition occurs when we go from dependence to independence; the second occurs when we’ve aged sufficiently that we seek a deeper understanding of our existence. Call if the why am I here transition, perhaps.

What’s interesting about the first transition is that it extends far beyond freshman move-in day at college. The transition from dependence to independence starts at college but continues, for some, nearly a decade. The search for independence includes college, the year or two you take off before entering graduate school, those first few jobs that don’t quite challenge, perhaps one or two or three moves, a couple different apartments, and maybe even a stint in the army. It typically isn’t until between age twenty-eight and thirty-two that the transition from dependence to independence is complete; that’s when a person finally gets a handle on that career thing, or his or her relationship, and finally arrives at something that feels like home. The completion of this transition manifests itself in putting down roots.

The second major transition period comes years later, when those roots we sunk in our late twenties have developed into the mighty oak tree that’s become the envy of the neighborhood. What happens during this transition is the days shorten, the nights cool, and we, the mighty oak, start shedding our leaves. It’s not unreasonable for us to panic during this transition; after all, everything we’ve always been depended upon to provide — shade, shelter, curb appeal — starts to drop away as its loses its meaning. As our dried up leaves spread across the neighborhood lawns and our branches go increasingly bare, we wonder why it is we have to lose everything that made us such a wonderful tree in the first place. But winter and loss is part of the cycle and come spring, we’ll be transformed. We just have to have faith that, this time, spring will follow winter as it always has. Standing in the midst of everyone, our bare limbs exposed, we have to have faith in the natural processes. And we have to trust God.

Whereas the first life transition frustrates us, the second can be downright terrifying. But neither transition occurs due to a lack of good planning or poor vocational counseling. Transitions are simply the cycles of life playing out in high definition. They are naturally occurring like the change of seasons. Transitions should be examined; they should be expected. They should not be viewed as a long-range plan gone awry.

I wanted to bend over and tell the red-haired girl this, but instead I solved the Jumble.