I don’t know if this belongs on my wormlips blog or here, so I’ll try this for now since it has application to my possible experience at SIT, from whom I still haven’t heard about my application status. It feels weird — dishonest, even — to be writing here when I have no idea if this is the direction I’ll be going in a few weeks. And I’m still superstitious about it all. But in the meantime, I have to have a place to put words, so I’ll forge ahead.

I just started reading a book called The Third Chapter which has nothing to do with ESL and everything to do with how we conduct our lives between the ages of 50 and 75. And I’m finding some interesting and inspiring material, despite the newagey overtones. When I read it, I can’t help but wonder if some of my depression has something to do with being in a between-phase, and not having found a new direction. Here are some quotes:

All changes, even the most longed-for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. —Anatole France

It reminds me of the Death card in the tarot, or the eight of cups: leaving behind good work or finished work to forge a new, sometimes difficult and painful path into the future.

Talk about newagey.

And from the author:

“As people move from one developmental stage to the next, they are likely to experience the twin emotions of loss and liberation, despair and hope, pessimism and optimism. It is so difficult to “let go” of the familiar, the routine, the proven, the daily rituals… The transition … is usually a time of fear, ambivalence, and chaos, during which it is hard to articulate where you are heading or how you will get there, and life feels out of balance and unfocused.”

“Between the stages there are transitions… that often feel empty, threatening, confusing, and directionless, but that… we should see as opportunities for reflection, rest, recuperation, and self-interrogation.” —Mary Catherine Bateson

“One thing that you do in composing a life is to put together disparate elements that need to be in some kind of balance, like a still life with tools, fruit and musical instruments.”

[“This is particularly important when our lives are thrown out of balance—when we have lost our jobs, moved to a new part of the country, experienced the death of a loved one—and we are facing the treachery of transition, the chaos of discontinuity.” —SL-L]

“Much of the coping with discontinuity has to do with discovering the threads of continuity. You cannot adjust to change unless you can recognize some analogy between your old situation and your new situation. Without that analogy you cannot transfer learning.” —Mary Catherine Bateson

“Unless you find ways to relearn and recycle, you are left with the model of hitting bottom and starting over… What is important is to use the experience up to now, the skills, the learning, to approach the moment of transition with the memory of what has been learned before, and therefore the knowledge of what new learning felt like.” —Mary Catherine Bateson again (and this one does relate to TESOL, really)

“[William] Bridges claims that, in our highly mobile society… people fail to recognize that any transition process — in life, in love, in work — not only requires adapting to a new situation, but it also means letting go of old habits.”

“It is Erikson’s penultimate stage — “generativity vs. stagnation” — that is most relevant to… people in their Third Chapters. By generativity, he is referring to the impulse within us to nurture and guide the next generation… [H]e… include[s] teaching, writing, innovation, artistic expression, activism, advocacy, and service… This “stagnation” is what Carolyn Chen, at seventy-five, fears as she experiences the odd and ominous “hollowness” in her body, as she moves through her days “in slow motion.” She knows the “chasm of emptiness” will consume her if she doesn’t find a way to navigate… between loss and liberation.”

“The transition is made easier and smoother if we search out continuous learning; the skills and qualities that we honed in the past might be transferred to the new problems and situations that we face in the present and future. Recollection — the deliberative plumbing of our memories — supports the new learning in which we are embarked and gives us courage to endure the anxieties and fears of passing through the “neutral zone.”

“Using the classic lens of economics, Matthew Gladstone graphically describes the “perplexing bind” that we face in our Third Chapters: the tension between continuing to pick the berries, even though each one tastes less pleasurable, and moving on to something strange and unfamiliar that may provide the excitement and adventure but may not offer us the resources we need to survive and prosper… The berries no longer tasted sweet. But in facing the loss of leaving the work that had defined their identities and brought them reknown, they trembled at the idea of seizing upon something new… The searching agendas of our Third Chapters — often experienced as confusing, risky, and passionate — are likely to be more difficult and demanding than the learning we have experienced at earlier stages in our lives, making the journey forward feel more hazardous. The storieswe compose [about our futures] are our only map.”

Try to find “the ways in which our childhoods often anticipate the ways we choose to give forward… [to learn] new ways of being useful.”

[Someone was] “reclaiming her individual identity, ‘shedding the bonds’ of the life that had intervened… The Third Chapter is not a construction of where we have been. It means moving into a different dimension, crossing the border into new territories.”

“Several women and men who had been unsuccessful and underachieving students in school, and who had been socialized to think of themselves as ‘stupid’ or deficient, spoke about their need to overturn the ancient negative identities laid on them by ‘insensitive and inept teachers’ before they could begin to express the intelligence they brought to the new projects in their Third Chapters… Third Chapter learning requires a different approach to the acquisition of knowledge and the mastery of skills, on that is contrary to the ways they learned in school.”

In this phase of life “there is a ‘different kind of knowing’ that many people found almost impossible to describe in words.”

“When men and women talked about ‘becoming a different person’ in their Third Chapters, they described a ‘reinvention of the self,’ a reorientation of their ‘core values,’ and a discovery of ‘soul.'”

“Her climb out of the dark hole of depression didn’t happen all at once. But slowly Meredith came to the realization that she wanted to do something in the world that was ‘important and meaningful,’ that she wanted to use her experience and skills to create something new.”

“‘Everything is incremental.’ Nothing changes quickly or fundamentally. We must recognize that people and structures have a long history — ‘many years of piled-on stuff’ — and it is impossible to uncover and undo all of those layers of living. Change happens slowly, tiny step by tiny step, and if you accept that point of view, then you can maintain some measure of optimism and hope. If you don’t… you’re ‘dead in the water.'”