Transitions

Throughout our life, there will be periods of transition, from our old self to the new one. Most of the time, they are so subtle that you will not notice where one ends and the other begins. We ride through these smooth transitions that when you notice where you are, you will not know exactly how you got to that place. Not one particular moment brought you there.

And there are transitions you sense. They bring chaos, inconsistency to the way things should be, challenging your beliefs. They are gaps, where you don’t know where things should go. Things could be falling apart or falling into place. And you won’t know until you get through. They are hiccups, where your understanding has not yet caught up with the new reality. You could’ve already changed, but you didn’t know. And all the things you identified yourself with no longer apply. They are pauses, that do not care where you are in your life when it happens. They may leave you suspended in the air of uncertainty, lost in the sea of possibilities, or caught in seeming emptiness.

That’s why we want to find ourselves in these transitions. We have shredded our old self but don’t seem to have the new one ready and waiting. We look for it in different places. We seek it deep in our consciousness. We try to see it in the experiences we have. We create it from the remains of our past self, salvage the parts that still feel right, and add new parts your old self wouldn’t imagine you having. The only guide you have in this transition is your instinct.

I believe that as soon as our old self has passed, the new one has already taken its place. But we don’t understand this new self yet. We don’t know how it fits to our idea of our self and the reality. The external world is not aligned with our internal world, as it used to be. This transition is when we catch up, when we get these worlds aligned. Some people get stuck at this stage, trying out different personas and not getting it right. So, they wander from places to places. And some people eventually get through this, by choice and discovery, to face another transition.

This is how life naturally unfolds. Life, by design, will not get better, but we will. Transitions must happen, without force nor resistance. All that exists, exists through this ending and beginning. This is the only way forward, the only way to live, and the only way to die.