In Transition

Night turns into day, we travel from here to there and back again. Through each part, we are accomplishing, enjoying, sweating it out, learning from it. Yet, no matter how much we accomplish, enjoy, sweat, or learn, we find ourselves, once again, faced with the transitions.

There are days, like some of mine in the last week, in which my transitions are so extreme--an overnight of work followed by a sun-filled train out of town, a week caught up in the tasks of home followed by a weekend far from responsibility--that it is hard even to get through them. The eyes don't focus quite right, the mind can't quite assimilate the pieces of information that just don't fit together. Yet, getting the most out of life requires mastering--or at least managing--the transitions. If we don't want to live in a straight line, we have to be willing to zigzag a little. If we want to experience more, we have to stretch our legs a little farther and open our eyes a little wider. The steps may be too hard, and the light may be too bright, but we make the transitions because staying in the same place is just not enough for us. And in doing so, sometimes we realize that the destinations are the easy part. It's in the transitions between them that we really learn how to live.