New Passages

A chance to do something else

"You will have to stop pretending to be the person you have been and begin to recognize, and ultimately accept, who or what you are becoming."- New Passages, page 66

Sheehy tells us that at each transition, each “passage”, we’re vulnerable, unprotected. She brilliantly uses the example of a lobster, which sheds its shell over and over again. And each time after the shed and before the re-growth the lobster is uncovered, waiting for the next shell growth stage.

The people who know they are to shed their shell at certain stages use those transition times to revise their personal narratives. I loved it when I read about people saying they “feel more myself now.” I’ve been saying for over two years now that I don’t want the old me and all that went with it, but I don’t know how to measure what the new me is doing–I don’t know what success looks like now. It was comforting to read many others expressing that same sentiment. So I am renewed in my quest to discover what the definition of success is for me, for who I am now becoming.

Transitions/passages are good

"A single fixed identity is a liability today."- New Passages, page 71

In the past 30 years I’ve seen continuous change in our workplaces leading to change training and even whole departments doing nothing but change management. Due to this you’d think I wouldn’t have to have any Aha’s that “change is good”, “change is necessary”, but in this book it really struck a chord: change is the only way, at every stage, we’re going to move on to a fuller way of living. For me, it’s the change that leads into 2^nd Adulthood. I was in Middlessence and trying to hold on to it. Sheehy notes that the most successful people have the most Middlessence problems as they have to follow their own act. I liked part of who I was, knew I had to change to be who I wanted to be, but was still stuck. What I was experiencing was the loss of parts of myself I felt were really awesome—loss that has to be grieved in order to move on. I was finally moved to action by Gloria Steinham’s comment on how huge this type of loss is as she said, “it’s not a loss, it’s another country!”

Sheehy interviewed people who’d successfully worked through the loss and come into their new identity saying “I’m happier now than at any point in my life”. So I will treat the loss of the old me like I have the loss of my beloved pets, beloved pastors who’s moved on to other churches and gorgeous trees that have died – working through the stages of grief.

Who is the real me now?

"We find ourselves facing a game we don’t know how to play."- New Passages, page 144

The transition to 2^nd Adulthood is massive. Most people here move from years of pleasing others (spouses, children, bosses, co-workers) in order to survive to a place where they can control much of what happens in their life. The book calls it a transition from survival to master–so now you can be the real you instead of whomever you needed to be to please all those people to get ahead. By 50 we know what we like and we’ve been gathering skills and knowledge and now can put them to use.

Some know what they’re looking for but aren’t confident they’ll find it. Others don’t even know what the next stage should look like for them.

A couple suggestions I found helpful for me to discover what my game should be so I can plan:

• Look down the long tunnel that has been your life. Watch yourself, watch the other people in your life. What is it about that person from long ago you’d like to keep or do again?
• What period in your life did time really fly?
• Ask yourself: What did you most like to when you were 12?

You can tell when you’ve hit it as your stagnant feelings give way to a new sense of aliveness. And people who’ve found it say at this point they no longer care what others think of what they want to do. If it fits them, they’re moving forward toward it.