![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wishes, dreams
Jan. 21st, 2013 09:32 pmAs I continue to read this book, Transitions, it makes me think about wishes and dreams. It talks about stages of life, in relatively broad, sweeping terms, but part of the discussion is commentary on how there really aren't a lot of specific life stages that can be broken down in to things that happen in your teens, 20's, 30's, et cetera. Despite that, Bridges claims that there's use in thinking of life stages centered around the Sphinx's riddle of the thing that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening. The transition from four legs to two legs is the point where one finds one's place in the world as an independent person, while the transition from two legs to three marks a different shift that involves, to some extent, a shift away from the emphasis on independence and towards seeing one's life as part of a continuation of the human story.
I might not be articulating these points precisely as Bridges intended to, but this is the sort of book where one is encouraged to pause and consider, on a personal level, questions raised by the book's ideas and stories. A good thing.
It puts me back to questions like, who am I? How do I want to treat people? Who do I want to be?
There's some discussion of making a big move as a transition, which is comforting to me. It's hard to have left behind certain elements that came to be part of my identity, like the Scrabble society, ceramics, and the bike co-op. S keeps telling me I should go hunt down the two potential leads on ceramics studios here, but I haven't had the energy to do so. Ceramics studios are all unique spaces with unique personalities, so a new studio wouldn't recover that old identity anyway, just as the new bicycling gang, scrabble friends, and rowing team don't replace the bicyclists, scrabblers, and rowers from Arizona.
In those three phases of transitions - endings, beginnings, awkward in-between-ness - I am feeling the awkward in-between-ness a lot out here.
Addendum: Bridges also encourages a view of one's life as a narrative story/experience, something I suspect resonates with my father, and probably with a lot of people, as it can be a comforting perspective that reminds us to look beyond the present moment of discomfort. Interesting to note that the early thirties is a common period of crisis for people, as they reach a point where they're past the transition into the independent phase and then start to wonder, now what? I feel like I've both hit that point and not-hit that point. On the one hand, I've been doing this academic scientist thing for nine years now, so in that respect it's familiar, and aspects have started to wear thin (mostly, the job/financial insecurity aspects). On the other hand, this isn't a static job - there's progression from earning a degree to trying to find a new rhythm/pace of things as a postdoc - a continuation of changes.
I might not be articulating these points precisely as Bridges intended to, but this is the sort of book where one is encouraged to pause and consider, on a personal level, questions raised by the book's ideas and stories. A good thing.
It puts me back to questions like, who am I? How do I want to treat people? Who do I want to be?
There's some discussion of making a big move as a transition, which is comforting to me. It's hard to have left behind certain elements that came to be part of my identity, like the Scrabble society, ceramics, and the bike co-op. S keeps telling me I should go hunt down the two potential leads on ceramics studios here, but I haven't had the energy to do so. Ceramics studios are all unique spaces with unique personalities, so a new studio wouldn't recover that old identity anyway, just as the new bicycling gang, scrabble friends, and rowing team don't replace the bicyclists, scrabblers, and rowers from Arizona.
In those three phases of transitions - endings, beginnings, awkward in-between-ness - I am feeling the awkward in-between-ness a lot out here.
Addendum: Bridges also encourages a view of one's life as a narrative story/experience, something I suspect resonates with my father, and probably with a lot of people, as it can be a comforting perspective that reminds us to look beyond the present moment of discomfort. Interesting to note that the early thirties is a common period of crisis for people, as they reach a point where they're past the transition into the independent phase and then start to wonder, now what? I feel like I've both hit that point and not-hit that point. On the one hand, I've been doing this academic scientist thing for nine years now, so in that respect it's familiar, and aspects have started to wear thin (mostly, the job/financial insecurity aspects). On the other hand, this isn't a static job - there's progression from earning a degree to trying to find a new rhythm/pace of things as a postdoc - a continuation of changes.
