Yes. For those of you who stumbled, the headline is correct.---
But wait. I hear music, and it is not an orchestra of cicadas tuning up. Is that Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" wafting in the breeze? Or could needles from piñones be combing through the notes to make this music sound like Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance"?
Perhaps what I hear is both, playing a mismatched duet.
As we drive through each year, through the predictable and the unexpected, late May and early June are often a time of twists and turns, of significant transitions in our lives and in the lives of the people we care about.
As spring gives way to summer, kids graduate--from preschools; from elementary, middle and high schools; and from colleges and universities. These kids, and their families, look forward to whatever lies ahead in the fall. Hopefully, for college and university graduates, that means looking forward to jobs upon graduation.
This is also a time when many couples get married. Wedding bells peal for those who leave solitary lives to join with partners (and their partner's family) in relationships that are about love (whatever that is), as well as economic and social teamwork.
We can drive through these transitions as unthinkingly as we do when driving with automatic transmissions, or we can drive through them as aware as those of us who prefer manual transmissions. The awareness that comes with manual transitions doesn't allow for easy cruising. To be aware is to be tuned to the road and to better observe the beauty and complexity of our dynamic journey through life--the hills and valleys, the traffic, the meandering curves.
So it is with our psychological journeys.
Of course, it is important to keep our eyes on the road ahead. But, too often, we neglect the stretch of road we left behind. To go forward means to leave something behind. Transitions in life mean change.
Picture yourself at a wedding. There is an abundance of joy, but also an abundance of tears. I've married people, as an officiant. Believe me, it is difficult not to cry while performing a wedding ceremony. Why is that? Are these exclusively tears of joy, or do they represent something more powerful and significant than joy?
They do.
In life, as on the road, we are always being followed. Some of what follows drops back, discreetly keeping out of sight, perhaps more present for being just out of sight. Some of what follows stays close enough to tailgate, threatening to make our every move dangerous. Others (the sneaky, playful ones) take side roads that merge with ours at various points. Still others (angry and aggressive) try to overtake and pass us, blasting horns and taking chances with whatever traffic is coming toward us.
It is what we are leaving behind, and what follows us, that brings on tears. What lies ahead brings smiles and excitement…which eventually become tears. In life, the future necessarily brings success as well as the pain of disappointment and failure. It bring tears that come from confronting difficulties, disease and, eventually, death. What lies ahead, the difficult and the joyful, eventually gets left behind.
In all of this, we mourn the person we were, as well as celebrate the person we are becoming.
Transitions hold this tension of loss and possibility as closely as racing down a road holds the emotions of leaving old, familiar terrain and, simultaneously, the emotions of entering new, uncharted territory.
Perhaps it is the sporting, rubber-laying part of me: I prefer manual transitions to automatic transitions. As a shrink, I believe they are healthier. I feel, embody and celebrate manual transitions in ways that are more conscious than when I am driving through my life using automatic transition.
It is the job of shrinks like me to help people appreciate the difference between these types of emotional transitions--to participate more fully in the beauty and complexity of our dynamic journey through life.
"Pomp and Circumstance," anyone? "Bridal March"? Let them trail behind you, like raucous cans tied to your car as it carries you (clutch at the ready) to whatever it is you will explore in life, or wherever you will honeymoon.
Take plenty of tissues.
