In between the end of one thing (relationship, career, stage in life, etc) and the beginning of the next is a period of emptiness, chaos, floating. We may mask it with the actions of daily life. But at the heart of any particular transition, there is a big blank. Though I left consulting believing I knew what I wanted to do, my plans soon disappeared into the void.
Our society recognizes endings and new beginnings. But we rarely acknowledge the intervening abyss. I had read about it in Transitions, by William Bridges, but was nevertheless surprised by the depth of its emptiness, and by how long I spent there. It felt like deep inertia, shaped by small daily routines.
Because we hit our midlife reorientations at around the same time, I have several friends on parallel paths. I could see them making their way through the same thing. But however supported we are by our families and friends, there is something essentially solitary about a big life transition. Ultimately, it’s between you and your soul, choosing your new path, hoping it’s a good one, and bumbling along it a step or two each day. Or not.
There is a rare feeling of freedom that comes with being in between. You’re a stranger in your old life and your new one. I couldn’t even dream about the future during that period. Any guidance I received was limited to right now, today. I could see the step I was taking, but no further. It’s a time of living in the moment because there’s nowhere else to go.
Are you in this period yourself, and seeking a roadmap? In Transitions, Bridges tells us that what he calls the “neutral zone” is typically:
- Recognized in some tribal societies as the “time between dreams”; the time where the person would go alone into the desert or forest
- Marked by feelings of lostness, emptiness or disconnection
- Characterized by greater need for time alone, and attention to small, seemingly unproductive routines, like walking in the park, staring out the window, or drinking tea. Bridges calls this “the basic industry of the neutral zone, which is attentive inactivity and ritualized routine.”
He urges surrendering to this emptiness, and identified three reasons why this gap between the old life and the new is essential to the process of transition.
- “The process of transformation is essentially a death and rebirth process, rather than one of mechanical modification. …. Chaos is not simply “a mess”. Rather it is the primal state of pure energy to which the person 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 or identification. …
- “The process of disintegration and reintegration is the source of renewal. …. In keeping with our mechanistic bias, we have tried to make do with “recharging” and “repair”, imagining that renewal comes through fixing something defective or supplying something that is missing. But it is only by returning for a time to the formlessness of the primal energy that renewal can take place. …
- “The last reason for emptiness between the stages of the life journey is the perspective it provides on the stages themselves. Viewed from the neutral-zone emptiness, the realities of the every day world look transparent and insubstantial; we can see that everything we ordinarily think of as reality is now an “illusion”.” - pp. 140-142
So what can we do about it? Bridges offers suggestions including “don’t try to fast-forward”, and “find a regular time and place to be alone”. I found that there was nothing I could really do except surrender into the unknown, rest, and try to treat myself gently.
But perhaps the best advice comes accidentally, in a teaching story from one of the native tribes in the Pacific Northwest, answering a child’s question “what should I do if I get lost in the woods?” Here it is, in the form of a poem by David Wagoner:
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
- from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems, 1999
For me, this poem captures the paramount importance of “attentive inactivity” and letting yourself be found by the larger Intelligence that embraces and moves through you. Have you experienced this void during a major life transition? What was it like for you?