So This Is Living?
Someone comes to pick up a piece of furniture.

They pay. They load it into their car. They drive away.

And now there is an empty space in the house where something we were so used to no longer exists.

I've been experiencing a lot of this lately. Furniture leaving. Boxes arriving. Things being moved from one room to another. Walls painted. Old things sold. New things opened, built, bolted and hung.

The funny thing is, the old furniture didn't suddenly change. There was nothing wrong with it.

The bedside tables were the same bedside tables they'd been for years. At one point, I chose them. I liked them. They belonged in the room.

And then one day, they didn't.

Someone else came to pick them up, put them in her home and wrote to me afterward, “They're gorgeous.”

Same tables. So what changed?

I've been thinking about attention to detail.

When we're in a new relationship, a new job, a new home, attention to detail might mean, “I'm so thrilled with my decision!” We notice all the things we love and appreciate about the newness. The freedom. The extra money. The care. The environment. The way someone looks at us. The light coming through a window.

All these tiny details become evidence: this was the right choice for me.

And over time, some of those details fade. The newness goes. And sometimes our attention goes with it.

What was once beautiful becomes beige. Certainty becomes doubt. We start noticing the details that point to insufficiency, lack, disgust, outrage, hurt.

Where did the appreciation go? The certainty that this was the right choice for me?

Did the thing change? Or did what I was able to see change? Maybe both.

Attention to detail can inspire great joy. It can also suck the joy right out of life.

And maybe transition begins somewhere in there. Not necessarily when something actually changes, but when we start noticing something we weren't willing or able to notice before.

Sometimes letting go of something or someone isn't one bold, brave decision. It's more subtle than that.

Incremental moments that reveal details you don't forget. Consequences you adapt to. Unspoken desires for more space, more peace, more something that get pushed aside because, for now, everything still fits.

Sometimes those micro moments accumulate, then fester, then erupt until they're splayed out in an embarrassing, messy heap of shit you'd really rather not look at.

And until that heap is staring you in the face, maybe no decision had to be made. It was totally ok, totally possible to simply float from one mini upset to the next, thankfully distracted enough to keep the ignored stuff, ignored.

But eventually, something gets your attention.

Life is full of transitions. Some we welcome. Some we ignore or avoid. Some we don't even know we're in until we look around and realize the landscape has changed.

And some happen in a moment.

Before my sister died, I could FaceTime her. Her girls and my girls would run around behind us, their faces appearing on the screen because they wanted to chime in on our conversations.

It was completely ordinary. Until there were no more moments like those. And then the details of those ordinary moments became something else.

The interruptions. The girls in the background. Her face on my screen.

The thing changed. And what I was able to see and appreciate from those moments changed.

Maybe that's part of what makes transition so disorienting. Our attention moves.

Sometimes we're looking at what has disappeared. Sometimes we're suddenly seeing what has been there all along. Sometimes we're looking so intently for what is wrong that we stop seeing what is still beautiful. Sometimes something beautiful stops being enough. Sometimes we know something before we're willing to do anything about what we know.

That space between knowing and doing is uncomfortable as hell. In that space, we say one thing. Think the opposite and ignore the feeling that comes up in our denial.

I've done that.

I've also done the scary thing. Not because I suddenly felt brave, but because eventually, I couldn't ignore what I knew anymore.

Maybe that's one version of what letting go looks like. Not getting rid of all the old "furniture" before walking neatly into a new life, but beginning to notice what we're carrying with us.

Because how much of what we think we've left behind simply gets packed into the boxes and moved into the next room? It never actually leaves the house.

The new relationship. The new job. The new home. They start to look and feel weirdly familiar.

Change is always happening. It can be subtle. It can be loud. It can turn your world upside down in a mere moment. And yet we resist, ignore, run from it, deny it, argue with it, shout at it to slow down, stop or go bother someone else.

I've welcomed transitions, even instigated them, I've suffered through them, avoided them and had them thrust upon me. I still don't count myself an expert. Which is strange, because transitions are part of being human. We should all be experts. They happen all the time. Whether we ask for them or not.

Maybe the breakup, the lost job, the career pivot, the end of a friendship, the end of a role we've played or simply the thought that something is changing or something needs to change, isn't necessarily evidence that something has gone wrong.

Maybe it's evidence that life is alive. And that it wants our attention.

I keep thinking about the signs on the freeway. We see them. We pass them. Sometimes we're driving so fast we don't really register what they said.

Maybe the details that get our attention are a little like that.

What do we miss when we move through transition too quickly?

What happens if we slow down enough to actually read the sign?

Transition literally means changing from one state to another. Movement towards. And we are constantly in flow, even when our environment looks like nothing has changed.

Maybe being comfortable with transition isn't about becoming good at change at all. Maybe it's becoming more willing to live an alive life. To notice what's changing before we know what it means. To notice the thought that keeps returning. The image we can't shake. The response in our body. The thing we've stopped pretending not to know. The thing that tickles our mind. Excites our breath. Causes curiosity without forcing anything.

Nothing in life stays exactly as we are currently experiencing it. Neither do we.

So maybe transition isn't the interruption. Maybe transition is the living.