“Life is a transition.” – Lailah
Gifty Akita
I just ate the last tomato sandwich of the season. Either
bugs or blight or both took out my tomato plants, so I pulled them up
yesterday. As sweaty and grouchy as I get in the last heat of the summer, it’s
always a bit sad when the garden starts to fail and die. But then, I struggle
with transition.
It’s not the major transitions that get to me. I went from high school to college, college to work, single to married,
married to motherhood, motherhood to empty nest with relative ease. Those were
transitions I chose, prepared and planned for.
It's the unexpected transitions and the small, frequent transitions
– the ones I have no control over - that challenge me. It’s reasonable to get a
bit panicked by things like “now my husband's out of work" or "my
daughter has to have appendix surgery - today." With pause, think, breathe
and make a plan, I have coped with these. But I have to focus and breathe even
more calmly when something like the car won't start or the plumbing gets
clogged or a pet gets sick happens. Why?
Transition is the constant in every day. We move from sleep
to dream, dream to awake; home to work, work to home, busy to resting; still to
active; and so on…And, on any given day, we are parents, children, siblings and
spouses; caretakers, caregivers, alone and with others. We move between worker
and supervisor, teacher and learner. Then there are the emotional transitions -
strong to weak, energetic to tired, happy to sad, bored to fulfilled, needed to
needy, aware to oblivious – the shifts go on and on…
One of my
problems with transition has to do with being a perfectionist. If things aren’t
just right then they’re not right at all and keeping the bar set that high
results in trouble shifting gears. When
I was busy being the perfect worker, I worked longer and harder than my family preferred.
Yet, in order to meet my personal standards as a mother, I never truly focused
on work. The same goes for housework and yard work and life's other details. As
long as perfect is what I'm striving for, I am destined to fail. Add to that, the
unease that comes with not being in control and unexpected transitions become a
big deal.
Over time I have learned that striving for balance and embracing
compromise help me transition more easily. It also helps to not be so hard on
myself. Chaos happens and, it turns out, a little imperfection is just fine.
It’s easier to move through the day, as well as life changes, if you take
things one step at a time, rather than let the big picture loom so large that you
become paralyzed.
I used to see everything that challenged me as a struggle,
but the more I embrace (and remind myself to embrace) the idea that all I
really have to do is simply keep moving from transition to transition, the less
of a requirement struggling is.
Unexpected things happen, as do predicted things like the
end of tomato season. Transition is the bridge that moves us between and
through. If I simply remember to pause, think, breathe and make a plan that
embraces the inevitable imperfection that life brings, I can better deal with
transitions big and small. After all, the end of tomato season signals the
beginning of fall, which means a whole new set of plants to plant and pleasures
to enjoy.
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