Before boredom or some sense of stability start to set in, on comes the next transition to wake us from our slumber. Every transition is a moment of crisis, a movement sometimes gradual, other times more sudden, from a place of comfort to a more challenging experience, like the adolescent who transitions to the first choices as a young adult.
Sometimes it is the other way around whereby tribulation makes way to greater consolations, like a moment of great uncertainty that unravels into new and unexpected opportunities. We live personal transitions, but we also make transitions in groups, as a family or even a nation as a whole.
There are transitions that are part of the life cycle of every individual or group, that we expect to happen and try to wade through as best we can. It is expected that a couple that has its first child transitions to a different lifestyle. We expect a transition from a person who has reached pensionable age who, willingly or not, leaves his or her workplace and takes up a new place in one’s family and society.
There are other perhaps more dramatic transitions, those we least expect – like the sudden loss of a loved one, the loss of one’s job or a global pandemic – that jolt us into a place of uncertainty and fear. Transitions like these challenge our self-perception, they make us tap into previously untapped resources but also bring us face to face with our limits.
We all react in different ways to these transitions. Some of us come out stronger because we manage to grasp the significance of such moments. Others might feel initially overwhelmed and unconsciously freeze, holding on to what they have always known, subtly denying that there is even a transition taking place in their life. Gradually though, reality tends to sink in, and each person, with their own pace, manages not only to survive but mature and become more fruitful because of such transitions.
But there is one tragic outcome at the onset of every transition: the denial that it is beckoning to take place, and therefore the resistance to adapt and change. It is understandable that this takes place. Every transition in life comes with its fair share of anxiety and frustration but the inevitable outcome of every missed opportunity is stagnancy, a loss of motivation and a subtle conviction that life cannot be beautiful.
Despite the inherent challenges in all significant transitions, they are worth living through when they are not lived in solitude, when fears are shared and the limits that emerge are embraced. A sign of our times is that we have placed ourselves on a speeding treadmill in a race to determine who is fittest, most agile and most determined. This model leaves many lagging behind, and ironically, those who make it feel always more alone.
Well-lived transitions are fruitful when they become landmarks in a longer journey. Skipping transitions or getting stuck in them are ways in which the journey of our life becomes poorer and is reduced to a mere sense of survival.
Transitions are meaningful if living them we become more human, if we allow others to accompany us and dare to walk through untrodden paths. It is not just a question of how we transition but who we become when we get through them.
Fr Alexander Zammit, Member, Missionary Society of St Paul (MSSP)