Notice the Transition Point

I like to say that if I’m feeling bittersweet during a transition, it’s a beautiful signal. It means I love where I’m headed and I’ve loved where I’ve been. There’s a simultaneous grief and celebration, a mourning and a birth. It can be starting the new job, moving to a new city, nesting into a new home, surrounding yourself with new community, switching the dynamic of a relationship. All of these transitions offer both the farewell and the welcoming. Needless to say, it can be a little rocky.

There’s also the bittersweet level of enduring instability in order to arrive somewhere new. You have to both endure the uncertainty while savoring what lies ahead. There’s a calibration happening. We’re required to calibrate to a new rhythm and so we have to honor that however we know how.

Maybe it just begins with acknowledging it. Recognize that the very nature of transitions is to be in motion, to be not stable, to be aligning with something new. Think of a transition in music. You hang in the pocket during a great groove and inevitably have to focus back in to take it where it’s going next. It’s not just change. I’m talking specifically about the transition period where the shifting is in motion.

So what is it about transitions that piques my curiosity? They’re not meant to be sturdy, yet they might be the very thing that drives us towards that sturdiness. And as we go along for the ride, it’s important to pay attention well enough to know when we’ve arrived.

Only, we’re likely to find another transition once again in the very near future. And we can then feel grateful we've tuned into noticing the transition points in our lives so the unknown and the rocky points don't have to feel so unfamiliar that they shake us out of our centers of gravity.