The Beauty in Becoming: Embracing Life’s Transitions

Our Great Teacher, Nature, teaches us constantly as it has done since the beginning of time that Life is transitory. There is only impermanence. Every moment is part of a never-ending odyssey, everything is in a flow of construction or deconstruction, never ending, always changing.

The magic of transitions lies in becoming and unbecoming, with often no clear indication what will emerge. It is to this uncertainty we must surrender, overcome our urge to control the outcome and find our flow with what will manifest.

Take a close look at yourself, feel inside yourself and witness around you. Observe that everything is in a perpetual dance; moving; changing; a syncopation of life’s rhythms; sometimes happy; sometimes sad, but always in motion. Every line on your face tells a story, your feelings churn with hope or loss, the changing of the seasons brings reflection, hibernation and rebirth. Is there no magic in that?

Transitions for many is a heavy cross to bear. It reminds us of our mortality. Hence, we wrap ourselves with our ordinariness and conventionality because it brings comfort and makes us feel secure. Change disrupts this and provokes us to wander down the less-trodden path. Transitions often reveal our vulnerabilities. It challenges our perspectives and in its unrelenting way, rips away our security blanket. It’s not surprising, therefore, that change is often associated with loss.  Whether it’s youthfulness, a relationship, or a physical relocation, it brings distress.

Insidiously, change has been subverted by commercialisation where discarding the old and acquiring the new has become the mantra. But this is an illusion of change. In plain view is the exploitation of our weak self-esteem – apply this potion and retain your youthfulness; buy that car and retain your status; be this person and retain your partner.

Authentic life is one of transition. It expresses itself through the physical where we start to notice subtle changes in our bodies, emotionally, when we grow distant from people or things we hold dear and ontologically, where we embrace a different relationship with ourselves and make peace with our own becoming and unbecoming. 

The reality of life is one of finitude whence this life as we know it ends and we transition into a new state; living on in the timeless life-cycles of nature.

When we become at peace with transition, lose our fear and embrace it, our life acquires a new meaning. We slow down time by living more in the moment, and we begin to see the beauty in change. The fear dissolves and we embrace life for what it really is.

‘Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown’

The Times They Are A-Changin’, Bob Dylan