I love to walk along the edge of the water, wandering in and out depending on the footing and the waves. It’s a good metaphor for moving through a transition. The edge of the water changes from one step to the next.
Transition begins before change happens. Like the pressure of weather and waves on sand, you feel change before it happens. Then, if you are lucky, you get to choose change. Finally, you wait for the change to take place and become familiar. Most people who have changed jobs or looked for a new home know that this process is as inevitable as the waves on the sand. It takes time to move into something different.
This is true even if you, like me, are packing up the cottage to head home. Home will be different when I get there. That’s part of the point of going away: you return different and you generate different choices.
But going home also includes the desire for the familiar. It feels good to know what to expect and how to handle it. So we live in paradox: we are ready for change and yet we want habit, pattern, expertise. Every transition holds this tension, sometimes for months. How do you handle knowing you want two opposed things at once?
When I walk the beach, I don’t expect a straight line. I expect the edge to move, and that sometimes I will walk it easily and sometimes I will move away for awhile, and sometimes I might be cold and wet. I don’t expect the unexpected. I expect the tensions that govern the edge. And because I expect them, I can enjoy moving through them.
All transitions are temporary, even when you’re not sure what’s on the other side.
