Armchair Speculation

Sitting down at my desk in early 2024, I opened my laptop. As I began typing out my reflections of the past few years, I felt amazed at how much had changed for me and my wife. Our lives are barely recognizable compared with what they were four years ago! We got married at the height of the COVID pandemic. I left work for 9 months to write a book. We moved to the suburbs. And my wife gave birth to two wonderful children!

Looking back on all that has happened, my head spun. Looking ahead, I wondered whether this pace of change may continue; at that thought, I felt intimidated. How could I best cope with this continual change, which happens seemingly all at once?

As I was reflecting, I learned about the book Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, by William Bridges. Upon reading it, I found its ideas useful in helping me make sense of how I felt amidst all of this change. (Note, linked books contain my Amazon affiliate link. I make a small commission if you buy them through my link.)

The book gave me permission to mourn the end of my prior life stage and to feel disoriented. Not only that, it suggests that these periods of disorientation are key to personal growth; they enable me to make the mental transition to who I am becoming. To allow my unconscious mind to process the changes, I should go on walks and let my mind wander. And it suggests that, as the disorientation fades, I should be open to new intriguing opportunities that come up.

Below I’d like to share my book notes. I hope they are as useful for you as they have been for me.

I. What are “transitions”?

Transitions are “the difficult process of letting go of an old situation, of suffering the confusing nowhere of in-betweenness, and of launching forth again in a new situation.” The author describes these as 3 transitional stages: (1) Endings, (2) The Neutral Zone, and (3) Beginnings.

A transition may be triggered by entering a new life stage or by an event that occurs within a life stage.

Transitional periods represent “the natural process of disorientation and reorientation marking the turning points in the path of growth.” In nature, the author argues, plants and animals undergo visible transitions, such as bare branches producing leaves and flowers or lizards shedding their skin. Humans, on the other hand, go through less visible transitions in the psychological realm that enable our “development and self-renewal.”

The major insight of the book for me was to understand what “The Neutral Zone” is, and how to most productively deal with it. More on that later.

Changes vs. Transitions: Bridges writes that “changes are driven to reach a goal, but transitions start with letting go of what no longer fits or is adequate to the life stage you are in. You need to figure out for yourself what exactly that no-longer-appropriate thing is … whatever it is, it is internal … The transition itself begins with letting go of something that you have believed or assumed, some way you’ve always been or seen yourself, some outlook on the world or attitude toward others.” The change is internal to the person, made for an internal purpose.

II. The Transitions 3-Stage Model

I’ve drawn the following diagram to summarize the author’s ideas of the three stages of a Transition. Additional notes about the stages below.

Bridges shares 4 rules of transitions:

1. When you’re in transition, you find yourself coming back in new ways to old activities
2. Every transition begins with an ending. We have to let go of the old thing before we can pick up the new one – not just outwardly but inwardly, where we keep our connections to people and places that act as definitions of who we are.
3. Although it is advantageous to understand your own style of endings, some part of you will resist that understanding as though your life depended on it.
4. First there is an ending, then a beginning, and an important empty or fallow time in between.

Learnings from Traditional Societies’ Rites of Passage

To create his framework, Bridges draws upon the learnings of anthropologist Arnold van Gennep’s studies of traditional societies’ rites of passage rituals. “During the first phase, the person or the group was separated from the old and familiar social context and put through a symbolic death experience. Then came a time in isolation in what van Gennep called the “neutral zone,” a no-man’s-land between the old way of being and the new. Finally, when the intended inner changes had taken place, the person or group was brought back and reintegrated into the social order on a new basis. Although some rituals emphasized one phase and minimized another, the passage rites all revealed this three-phase form to a remarkable extent.”

On Endings:

“Endings are, let’s remember, experiences of dying. They are ordeals, and sometimes they challenge so basically our sense of who we are that we believe they will be the end of us. This is where an understanding of endings and some familiarity with the old passage rituals can be helpful. For as Mircea Eliade, one of the greatest students of these rituals, has written, “In no rite or myth do we find the initiatory death as something final, but always as the condition sine qua non of a transition to another mode of being, a trial indispensable to regeneration; that is, to the beginning of a new life.” Even though we are all likely to view an ending as the conclusion of the situation it terminates, it is also and it is too bad that we don’t have better ways of reminding ourselves of this the initiation of a process. We have it backward. Endings are the first, not the last, act of the play.”

Disenchantment vs disillusion: A disenchanted person sees the earlier view as useful for that time, but no longer useful now. They take on a new perspective to move on to personal growth and do things differently based on the new perspective. A disillusioned person rejects the embodiment of the earlier view, and thus goes through the same play with similar actors (e.g. person who keeps getting married and divorced). They follow the same pursuits, but attain no real personal development or growth.

Neutral Zone:

“[The] neutral zone is meant to be a moratorium from the conventional activity of your everyday existence.”

“For many people, the experience of the neutral zone is essentially one of emptiness in which the old reality looks transparent and nothing feels solid anymore.”

This process, though unpleasant, is essential. Bridges writes, “the process of disintegration and reintegration is the source of renewal.”

“The first of the neutral-zone activities or functions is surender: one must give in to the emptiness and stop struggling to escape it. This is not easy, although it is made easier by an understanding of why the emptiness is essential. There are three main reasons for the emptiness between the old life and the new. First, the process of transformation is essentially a death and rebirth process rather than one of mechanical modification. Although our own culture knows all about mechanics, it has a great deal to learn from the past about death and rebirth. As Mircea Eliade has written, “For the archaic and traditional cultures, the symbolic return to chaos is indispensable to any new Creation.” In this sense, chaos is not simply “a mess.” Rather, it is the primal state of pure energy to which the person (or an organization, society, or anything else in transition) must return for every true new beginning. It is only from the perspective of the old form that chaos looks fearful. From any other perspective, it looks like life itself, as yet unshaped by purpose and identification. But it is, of course, from that “old form” perspec- tive that anyone who has just been plunged into transition views life, so it is no wonder that the neutral zone’s emptiness and fluidity are frightening.”

Beginnings:

“[We] come to beginnings only at the end. It is when the endings and the time of fallow neutrality are finished that we can launch ourselves anew, changed and renewed by the deconstruction of the structures and outlooks of the old life phase and the subsequent journey through the neutral zone.”

“The lesson in all such experiences is that when we are ready to make a new beginning, we will shortly find an opportunity. The same event could be a real new beginning in one situation and an interesting but unproductive by-way in another. The difference is whether the event is “keyed” or “coded” to that transition point, the way that electronic key cards are set to open a particular hotel room door. When the card code matches, the door opens, and the whole thing happens as if it were scripted. When it doesn’t match, the event is just an event, and you are still in the neutral zone. The neutral zone simply hasn’t finished with you yet.”

III. Transitions In Life

Bridges identifies two types of life transitions: those based on entering new life stages, and those that are event-driven (e.g. a birth, a death of a loved one, a change in a work situation, etc.).

Transitions Triggered by Entering New Life Stages

Bridges draws on the Sphinx’s riddle from Greek mythology to identify three major life stages. He uses this framework to succinctly summarize the various and sundry life stages identified in the psychological developmental research that he draws upon.

The riddle, posed to Oedipus, is: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

Oedipus’s solution is: “Man — who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a cane in old age.”

First Transition: From Childhood to Adulthood

• Bridges calls this “A Transition FROM Something”

• Late teens – Going from dependency to independency
  • Establishing a separate identity, distinct from that of being so-and-so’s child. 
  • “Searching for a place” is the time when the child leaves home and sets up shop for themselves.
• From Twenty-Two to Thirty-Three – the “novice period” of adulthood. 
• Age Thirty Transition / Settling Down – setting up long-term relationships and commitments that determine the success of one’s adult life. Bridges writes: “This time of second thoughts provides a clearer sense of personal direction than they have hitherto known-and even some goal or project that embodies that direction. The thirties can be a time of new or renewed commit- ment to what Levinson call “the tribe, some social grouping that has particular importance for the individual. This can be a formal organization or a profession, the community where one lives or an ethnic population of which one is a part, or “men” or “women” or “the working class,” or even “humankind.” ”

Second Transition: Adulthood to Old Age

• Bridges calls this “A Transition INTO Something” or a “Homecoming”
• He considers the mythical journey of Odysseus to represent this transition: After making his name in the Trojan War, he encounters trials and tribulations when returning home. Once home, he encounters dangers and realizes that home is not the same place. But he struggles to make his home his once again.

• “The transitions during this period depend less often on personal initiative and more often on someone else’s actions, such as your child’s decision to leave home or to marry. As you grow older, the illnesses and deaths among contemporaries carry with them the potential for unforeseen and unwanted transition.”
• “[Your] own expectations become important. These are largely the product of your culture and family history.”
• “In many Asian cultures, old age is revered as life’s apex – a time of greatest influence and deepest wisdom. The ancient Hindu image of the lifetime has an important transition point around the time of the birth of one’s grandchildren. Until that time, one has been in the Householder stage of life, a time in which self-fulfillment and personal development have involved participating in social roles, family life, and the world of work. But now you are ready for a change-a change caught in the very name of the next life stage, that of the Forest Dweller.”
• “[This] transition corresponds to inward changes that are evident in many Americans’ lives. It is marked by a growing concern for the significance and meaning of what a person has done as well as a loss of interest in simple success.”
• “[The] homeward journey of life’s second half demands three things: first, that we unlearn the style of mastering the world that we used to take us through the first half of life; second, that we resist our own longings to abandon the developmental journey and refuse the invitations to stay forever at some attractive stopping place; and third, that we recognize that it will take real effort to regain the inner “home.” “

Transitions Triggered by Events

Bridges is a bit less detailed in his description of these. They can, of course, happen in any stage of one’s life. But Bridges writes that, “the whole idea of typical stages begins to break down as one enters the middle years.” As illustrated in his comments above, many impactful events happen during these times that could cause someone to undergo a transition, particularly during the life stages of adulthood and old age.

Parting Thoughts

After reading this book, I felt more at ease with the sense of disorientation that I felt at various points of the past few years. As I enter mid-life, I’ve reflected on my professional aspirations, particularly in light of my young family, and have wondered what I really want. These reflections have been confusing and intimidating. Learning about the “Neutral Zone” has given context to my confusion. It has encouraged me to take more breaks to enable my unconscious mind to do its work more effectively. And I’ve stopped trying to force myself past this phase to extinguish the unpleasant feelings (repressing feelings never works anyway), and just try to sit with them instead.