Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I am either hanging on to a trapeze
bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I’m hurtling across space in between
trapeze bars.
Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It
carries me along a certain steady rate to swing and I have the feeling that I am in control of
my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But, once in
a while, as I’m merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance,
and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It’s empty, and I know, in
that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step,
my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart-of-hearts, I know that for me to grow,
I must release my grip on the present, well-known bar to move to the new one.
Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won’t have to grab the new one. But in
my knowing place I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some
moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I
am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my precious hurtles across the void of
unknowing I have always made it. Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on
unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is
the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no
insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow to keep hanging on to that old bar
is no longer on the list of alternatives. And so, for an eternity that can last a microsecond or
a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of “the past is gone, the future is not yet
here.” It’s called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change
occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old
buttons get punched.
I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a “nothing”, a no-
between places. Sure the old trapeze bar was real, and that new one coming toward me, I
hope that’s real too. But the void in-between? That’s just a scary, confusing, disorienting
“nowhere” that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a
waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and that the
bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth
occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our
lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Yes, with all the
pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can (but not necessarily) accompany
transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in
our lives.
And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather
with giving ourselves permission to “hang out” in the transition between trapeze bars.
Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar, is allowing ourselves to dwell in the
only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in
the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void, we just may learn how to fly.
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