Life Is in the Transitions summary

What shape has your life story taken? That might seem like an odd question. How can a life have a shape? If we look more closely though, it becomes clear that we tend to think that our lives follow a specific pattern. 

Usually, we think of our lives as being linear. We’re born, we get old, and we have various stages in between. This way of thinking is so entrenched in our culture that it seems completely normal. But in the past, people thought about the structure of life in a completely different way. 

Imagine getting married to someone of the opposite sex only to realize that you’re gay. Or imagine discovering that the gender you were assigned at birth doesn’t match who you really are.

As he collected stories of transition, Bruce heard about these kinds of transformations all the time. In fact, he identified 52 kinds of life changes that people experienced time and again. He called them disruptors, and categorized them into five key themes: the body, love, work, identity, and beliefs. 

One day, Lisa – a marketing executive – joined a conference call a few minutes early, and heard her colleagues gossiping about her ruthless ambition and sour disposition. The next day, she walked into her boss’s office and quit the corporate job that had been making her miserable for years. She changed careers and became a life coach and then a hypnotherapist, helping other people recover from the trauma she’d experienced for so long. 

That conference call was a turning point that spurred Lisa into action. It created a lifequake: a transition that fundamentally transforms how we perceive ourselves and our lives. 

Lifequakes are so disorientating because they shatter the stories we’ve always told ourselves about our lives. People who pride themselves on being a part of a happy family are left at a loss when their partners file for divorce. Career professionals who get their sense of pride from accomplishments at work are left reeling when fired from their jobs. 

To cope with a lifequake, we need to be able to craft narratives that can encompass the complexity of these transitions in our lives. 

Crises can happen to any of us. For example, anyone could get into a terrible car accident. But how people respond to a crisis like this varies widely. Some people may become furious and stuck, while others could be motivated to embrace a whole new career campaigning for road safety. An accident is a disruptor that is completely out of our control. No one would choose that particular plot twist in their life story. But we can choose what meaning we assign to it.

The key message here is: We can’t always control disruptive events, but we do control our response to them.

How do we come to terms with loss? Part of saying goodbye involves creating our own rituals for commemorating the life that we no longer have.

Rituals are a vital part of marking transitions and assigning meaning to them. They help to speed up acceptance, and they allow us to integrate our pasts into the new futures awaiting us. Some rituals can involve literally marking change on our bodies. For example, an ex-Nazi chose to cover all his fascist tattoos with religious symbols to signify his conversion. Other people choose to get new piercings or a wild new hairstyle after a divorce. 

Just as snakes shed their old skins to allow for shiny new growth, we have to be willing to shed parts of our old selves during a transition and allow for a period of being completely lost and confused. 

Every major religious narrative and fairy tale recognizes the value of being lost. Jesus was cast into the desert before he had a major epiphany, and Mohamed gained his wisdom on a mountaintop. The most formative experience of Red Riding Hood’s life would never have been possible if she hadn’t wandered into that forest. 

When Henri Matisse was diagnosed with colon cancer and had to undergo grueling surgeries, it seemed to signal the end of his artistic career. He could no longer stand up, never mind hold a paintbrush. While the health crisis did in fact end his painting career, it also opened a whole new chapter in his creative life: while lying in bed he started making the remarkable bright paper cutouts that he’s so well known for today.

Transitions involve loss, but out of the chaos comes the exciting opportunity to build something new. We must allow ourselves to be creative and experimental while exploring these new possibilities. 

By the end of his life, Bruce’s father had written 150 stories about his past, which he painstakingly pasted into a book, along with clippings and photographs. While once he’d been so desperate that he’d attempted to kill himself, the sheer act of writing his story gave him the sense of agency that his illness had denied him. 

During the Life Story Project, Bruce heard hundreds of stories about how people’s lives had changed. He realized that, like his father, the way people spoke about their experiences had a big impact on how they handled their transitions.