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Transition
3 min read · 723 words
Transition is the period during which the inhabitant is moving from one stable configuration to another. The period has different mechanics than either the configuration being left or the configuration being entered.
The hardware was built for the stable states. The transition period operates in conditions the hardware handles less smoothly. The inhabitant who has left the prior configuration but not yet stabilized in the new one is in territory where the usual cues are absent, the new cues are not yet familiar, and footing is less secure than it was before or will be after.
The transition is uncomfortable not because the inhabitant is failing at it. It is uncomfortable because the territory is structurally uncomfortable. There is no version of moving from one configuration to another that does not pass through the in-between, and the in-between has its own weather.
RUSHING THROUGH
Rushing the transition to escape the discomfort produces premature entry into the new configuration without adequate preparation.
The inhabitant who leaves the job and immediately takes another job without examining what produced the leaving often replicates the configuration in the new role. The inhabitant who exits a relationship and immediately enters another often brings the same patterns. The transition was supposed to allow some reorganization. The rush prevented it. The next configuration looks new but runs on the old patterns, and the inhabitant arrives at the same trouble with a different label on it.
EXTENDING INDEFINITELY
The opposite failure mode.
Extending the transition indefinitely, preferring the limbo to the commitment that any new stable configuration requires. The inhabitant who has left the prior configuration but cannot commit to anything new accumulates the costs of transition without arriving at the next configuration. The transition was supposed to lead somewhere. The indefinite extension prevents the arrival, and the in-between becomes the configuration — which the hardware was not designed to sustain.
TREATING THE TRANSITION AS ITS OWN CONFIGURATION
It is not the failure of the prior. It is not a failed start of the next. It has its own work.
What does the system actually need during this period? What operations support the reorganization that the transition was supposed to allow? What configurations is the inhabitant considering for what comes next? The transition has its own questions. Rushing past them compromises both the transition and the configuration that follows.
TEMPORARY STRUCTURE DURING THE GAP
Build scaffolding that holds the basics while the larger reorganization runs.
Sleep schedule. Food schedule. Movement. Social contact. Some productive engagement. The structures are not the new configuration. They are scaffolding that keeps the inhabitant functional while the deeper work happens underneath. Without them, the transition often unravels into something worse than either configuration would have been.
USING THE GAP FOR WHAT THE PRIOR PREVENTED
The inhabitant who has just left the demanding job has time available that did not exist before.
The time can be spent on the recovery the prior configuration was preventing. The reflection it did not allow. The exploration of directions it was excluding. These operations can substantially shape what configuration the inhabitant selects next — and often the value of the transition shows up later, in the quality of the next configuration rather than during the discomfort itself. The work the inhabitant did in the in-between sometimes turns out to have been the most important work of the decade. From inside, it looked like nothing was happening.
OTHERS WILL TRY TO RUSH IT
The well-intentioned pressure from family and friends to be settled, to have figured out the next move, to be back to normal often produces premature commitment.
The inhabitant’s transition runs on its own timeline. The people around them can be informed that the transition will take what it takes. Their comfort with the inhabitant’s situation is not the constraint. Letting other people’s discomfort drive the next configuration produces a next configuration shaped by their comfort rather than the inhabitant’s reorganization — and the inhabitant carries it for years.
The transition is its own territory. The operations there are not the same as the operations on either side of it. Staying with the territory long enough to do its work, and not so long that the work has ended and the staying has become hiding, is the discipline.