Transition

Do you have transition lenses on your glasses?  I had those years ago and I hear they have improved but the one thing that bothered me was they only transitioned where light was hitting them directly.  In the car sometimes only a portion of the lens would transition as the other part was in a shadow and away from direct contact with sun.  I’m not sure why I thought my glasses should simply KNOW that they should shade my entire lens…it was doing what it was ‘programmed’ to do.  It darkened when light hit it.  The glasses actually receive their ‘photochromic’ properties through the embedding of micro crystalline silver halides, typically silver chloride, in a glass substrate.  But silly me wanted the glasses to actually be smart and tell when I’m outside and thereby shade the ENTIRE lens – instantly, so I didn’t have to hold my glasses out the car window in to the direct sunlight until they changed uniformly.

Transitioning to a New Year is also awkward and seldom uniform in nature.  Only when the realization hits us that the transition has to be gradual, not sudden, can we possibly begin to understand what it means to transition to a New Year.  Hence the reasons many of those New Year’s Resolutions fail so miserably.  We somehow expected that the morning of January 1, or January 2, would somehow grant us a renewed interest in living and would empower us to change.

I remember counseling a young couple before they were to be married and they left me with the impression that something magical would happen as they walk back down the aisle after being proclaimed Mr and Mrs.  They were both disillusioned with this notion that everything will come together.  In fact, they refused to talk about certain topics because it would be “fine” once they were married.  Ah young love – ‘tis oh so blind, is it not?!

As we begin our transition to writing 2013 instead of 2012, may we also focus on HOW our own transition is going to look and feel.  Accepting today that it will not be a ‘hit you over the head’ transition will make it easier to enter in to.  There  won’t be this sudden “Trumpet Voluntary in G” moment and a ceremonial walking down of some aisle lined with loved ones and flowers that will change us forever.  Oh don’t get me wrong – I’m acutely aware that there ARE sudden moments when our lives are instantly transformed but even those moments put us in the position of having to transition to a new normal.  By entering in to the PROCESS of change, the PROCESS of transition, we can more easily see all the ways in which our actions, thoughts, minds and our spirits transform, over time, in to that which we dream.

According to Miriam-Webster Dictionary, the word ‘life’ is either a noun or an adjective.  But can we consider, for our own intrinsic interests, that ‘life’ is a verb?  It is action.  It is a ‘doing’ and not a ‘being’.  As we enter in to 2013, let us focus on our life in action – our life as something that evolves and is continually moving forward, collecting information and experiences, and processing them, thereby increasing the gift that is the “I” in all of us. It’s not going to happen overnight – this change for the better of which you seek.  Oh there will be bomb shell moments that force us over the cliff of change – usually of loss; but as I mentioned, those are the moments when we are still forced to learn how to transition.

A young man I know has just recently learned what it means to transition.  He understands, perhaps for the first time in his life, that the change he seeks is a process – it is a verb.  It is action and it does not, it will not, happen overnight.  There won’t be some magical  “you've-just-won-a-new-car” moment that will finally transport us to that perfection we seek.  It’s the “you've-won-a-new-car-and-now-you–have-to–pay-for-the taxes-license-plates-registration-and-then-learn-how-to-drive-it-and-maybe-in-six-months-you-may-figure-it-all-out-but-you'll-have-repairs-along-the-way”  moment.

As you transition in to 2013, remember that your life is a verb.  An action word.