For as long as animals have existed, we have aged and staged. We awaken, alive, without memories of the first years. Puberty strikes. We leave childhood for responsibility. We connect, partner, career, parent and then wake up one day and realise we are halfway through our life and wonder who we really are and what we really want to be doing with the time left. Not to mention who that person is sleeping next to us in the bed. The light changes, from morning to afternoon, as Jung suggested, and we leave youth behind and engage our mid lives and then our older times and then the final times.
Aging takes its natural time. And moving from stage to stage, while age related, occurs in each stage's own time as well. Staging takes resources and work to learning, innovate and redesign, to make transitions galore from one set of circumstances and stuff to another.
Each shift requires a change in the story of who we are, the choices we make and development of wider minds to deal with wider lives.
Some of us get stuck for a while. Even for years and years. Some try to jump stages. Some resist and avoid and fight the natural flow. The big one, our death, will not be avoided, no matter how we may try. One of my favourite quips is that in America, death is supposed to be optional.
Natural, age-driven changes usually give us plenty of time to accomplish each journey. Though a diagnosis of a serious disease moves us into another realm of transformation: the wicked forces.
Wicked forces arrive, unbidden, without warning, or with plenty of ignored or denied signs and portents. And then, in a moment, wham, we are slammed by an intractable upheaval.
The company no longer needs my career. The company ships my work to other countries. The company fails. The company succeeds beyond their wildest imagination. The world experiences dislocations and change at unprecedented scale. Ocean levels rise and flood millions of people out of their homes and properties. Growth will not happen. The Empire collapses in on itself. The kids elope and leave home long before we are done parenting them.
The Tsunami in Japan or Thailand in recent years. Housing crises. Drought, floods, a massive volcanic eruption. Asteroids. Gun-slinging sociopaths and psychopaths in positions of power. The global heating effects of burning massive amounts of carbon for our comfort and holidays in Barcelona. Memes like 'growth is the answer' for solving economic problems. And related, 'war is the best path to growth', bringing wars of convenience which breed more disaster. And one of my favourites, a capitalistic media driven by profits for shareholders which feeds the masses a steady diet of phony conflict, hyped, emotionalised fear, uncertainty and doubt, and outright lies. I could go on, of course. You would stop reading, if you were wise. So I'll stop while I may still be ahead. If we are parents, forget all the big, scary change stuff. We have teenagers to deal with. Which is really daunting.
Wicked forces are bigger than any one of us. Bigger than our tribes and communities. No one is in charge. If there is any control, it is in the shadows with any individual carefully given plausible deniability. Usually things happen so fast, there is not enough time to make the discoveries, learnings and adjustments of a graceful transition. There is shock, dislocation, complete disruption and we are faced with rebooting our lives.
No matter the wicked forces involved, they will come home to roost with each of us, our kids and grandkids, our workplace and our communities. These are circumstances, mostly beyond our influence much less control, which most of us will spend our lives adapting to, hoping we can cope with or even employ in some manner to flourish in our lives and work.
We have an option to be overwhelmed or go surfing.