Things Your Mom Should Have Told You

Things Your Mom Should Have Told You

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Life Is In The Transitions

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"We’ve been led to believe that our lives will always ascend, for example, and are shocked to discover they oscillate instead. Our society tells us we should be basking in progress, but our experience tells us we are beset by slip-ups. Might this gap help explain the anxiety so many of us feel?" says Bruce Feiler.
Galvanized by a personal crisis, Bruce Feiler spent several years collecting life stories from Americans who’d been through major life changes–from losing jobs to losing loved ones; from changing careers to changing relationships; from getting sober to getting healthy. He then spent a year coding these stories, identifying patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change.
“A host of unprecedented forces are reshaping contemporary life–technological, political, spiritual, sexual–yet the techniques we use to make meaning of our lives have not kept up. We’re going through transitions more frequently, but our toolkit for handling them has not changed to keep pace,” according to Bruce Feiler.
“Nonlinearity helps explain why we all feel so overwhelmed all the time. Trained to expect that our lives will unfold in a predictable series of stately life chapters, we’re confused when those chapters come faster and faster, frequently out of order, often one on top of the other,” said Bruce Feiler.
Acknowledging this reality is both a rebuke to centuries of conventional thinking that imposed order on our life stories where there was none, and an invitation to see in the seeming randomness of our everyday lives patterns that are far more thrilling than we could ever imagine,” said Bruce Feiler.
“We tallied up every single variation of unsettling life event I heard. The total came to 52 types. That’s 52 different sources of conflict, upheaval, or stress a person can face. The number of disruptors a person can expect to experience in an adult life is around three dozen. That’s an average of one every 12 to 18 months,” according to Bruce Feiler.
“Every now and then, one–or more commonly a pileup of two, three, or four–of these disruptors rises to the level of truly disorienting and destabilizing us. I call these events lifequakes…The average person goes through three to five of these massive reorientations in their adult lives,” said Bruce Feiler.
“William James, the father of modern psychology, said it best nearly a century and a half ago, and his wisdom has been sadly forgotten. Life is in the transitions. His point is even more true today: We can’t ignore these central times of life; we can’t wish or will them away. We have to accept them, name them, mark them, share them, and eventually convert them into a new and vital fuel for remaking our life stories,” said Bruce Feiler.
“If I could put what I learned into a simple formula, it would be this: The linear life is dead. The nonlinear life involves more life transitions. Life transitions are a skill we can, and must, master,” said Bruce Feiler.
"At the outset, I expected that how people handled crises in their personal lives or work lives or spiritual lives would be quite different from one another. Each transition must have its own playbook. I was mistaken. What I found was far more similarities–and a far more unified tool kit–than I ever would have imagined.," said Bruce Feiler.
“I’d like to redefine what life transitions mean. As long as we all have to go through these tumultuous periods, and not just once or twice, but three, four, five, or even more times in our lives…Why do we insist on talking about these periods as something dire and defeating…As long as life is going to be full of plot twists, why not spend more time learning to master them?” said Bruce Feiler.
"Transitions are becoming more plentiful. Life changes happen when they happen, often when we least expect them to happen, and at a pace that would have seemed unthinkable even a few years ago. The average adult will experience one life disruptor every one to two years…One in ten of those–around three to five in an adult life–will be so big that the person will undergo a major life change…It’s time we see ourselves as what we are: a people in perpetual flux," said Bruce Feiler.
"Transitions are nonlinear. Transitions are not hopscotch, they’re pinball; they’re not connect-the-dots, they’re freestyle drawing. People gravitate to the stage they’re best at–the long goodbye, the messy middle, or the new beginning–and bog down in the one they’re worst at. Even the most adept of us at managing transitions have parts of the process we don’t handle well.," said Bruce Feiler.
" The average length of a life transition is around five years. Fewer than one in four said it took under three years; more than half said it took between four and ten years; one in seven said it took longer. Again, multiply these figures by the number of transitions we’re likely to face–three, four, five, or more–and it’s clear that transitions are a lifetime sport that no one is teaching us how to play," said Bruce Feiler.
"More than 90% of people said their transitions ultimately did come to a conclusion. Transitions take longer than we think, but not longer than we need–and not forever, either.," said Bruce Feiler.
"Transitions involve tools that everyone can master and that everyone deploys in their own idiosyncratic way. The full tool kit involves accepting the situation, marking the change, shedding old ways, creating new outlets, sharing your transformation, unveiling your new self, telling your story," said Bruce Feiler.
" Transitions are autobiographical occasions. The disruptors, pivots, junctures, deadlocks, lurches, and lifequakes that dot our lives are narrative breaches that must be tended, in part, with narrative repairs. We must fix the plot holes in our life stories. A life transition is both the setting and the mechanism to do just that," said Bruce Feiler.
“Transitions are essential to life. Instead of dismissing them as hostile terrain we have to soldier through, we should see them as fertile terrain we can gain sustenance from…Transitions are filled with tumult and unrest, but they’re also filled with helpful purging and dazzling creativity…If we view them as openings, we just might open up to them,” said Bruce Feiler.
© 2025 Joanne McHugh
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