"To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often" - Cardinal John Henry Newman

Change is the one certainty of life. Life is simply a series of transitions from one stage of human development to another.

In The Art of Becoming Human, Mary Mercer identifies and describes the major life stages of a human person. Each major stage involves separation from previous attachments and lifts us to a higher level of self-awareness. Although each separation is painful, each new stage provides the potential to grow in our expression of love to others - to advance from merely desiring to be loved to actually desiring to love.

The first major change takes place at birth as the infant passes from womb to the sterile environment of a hospital.

The change in his environment could not be more drastic. For nine months he has lived in the warm, dark, quiet waters of his mother's womb with its muffled sounds and swaying motion, supported by soft, floating membranes. Suddenly - after terrifying, rhythmic compression - he is thrust into the environment of the delivery room where his unorganized, unintegrated senses are explosively assaulted by glaring lights, loud voices, and moving people. The abrupt immersion into air with its antiseptic odor irritates his nose, mouth, and throat. The rigidity of a steel scale makes his back arch in protest; the stiffness of cloth is a far cry from the softness of the womb. After the loss of a safe, small, confining space, how is he ever to find rest and satisfaction again? (16-17)

It is in the arms of his mother that the baby discovers his or her first reassuring signs of continuity. This new baby also drastically changes things for his or her parents.

Parents grow and develop, too. Day and night they must get up to take care of the baby whether they want to or not. They have to win the willingness of their own hearts to use their energies for the infant's benefit, to share the workload with each other, to pull together, to be aware of each other's stamina. The presence of the baby may help them to mature faster than almost anything else. (20)

As a toddler, the child experiences separation anxiety from his or her mother. Over time, the child gets over it. "Slowly, reluctantly, the toddler begins to accept the mother's promises in place of her presence." (25)

Attending school is the next major transition.

From birth they have experienced a series of separations that have progressively prepared them for existence outside the family. School is their first exposure to public life alone, and it is a major separation. It begins the public side of their lives apart from their mother, and both mother and child may weep as they part on the first day of school. (39)

In school we acutely experience judgment for the first time. We discover that our performance does not always match our intention. This leads to comparison with classmates which results in envy, anger, or (if we excel more than others) self-righteous pride.

Life on the school playground only adds to our confusion. We quickly discover that the rules of the playground are different than the rules of the classroom.

In the rough-and-tumble play on the school playground, children learn to harden themselves, as each child discovers the meaning of a slap, a pinch, a shove. Whether one is weak or strong, physical aggression precedes the learned articulateness of verbal aggression. A child is acutely aware that the proper behavior his parents demand at home is a woefully insufficient defense against the unrestrained free-for-all of the playground. (48)

At first, these difficult encounters are shared with parents, but

[a]s children grow older they gradually share fewer confidences with their parents. Their peers become the recipients of their secrets, their companions in good and bad experiences. This transfer of confidence to friends - a separation from home of a different order - is both important and necessary. Classmates understand school and playground situations that parents can know about only secondhand. (50)

Over time, "Children become less concerned about what their parents think of their appearance, language, and manners than what their schoolmates think" (51).

When we finally settle into middle childhood (six to eleven years), we experience some of the best days of our lives.

Because children do so like to belong, they feel very happy and content, at this age, to be members of a structured and predictable community. School is the center of their lives with its many pleasurable, affirming aspects: books and ideas, team sports, sociability with classmates. (58)

Because of this security, the next separation is devastating. "The next separation that awaits these prepubescent children will shatter this notion of security, certainty, and confidence, as it plunges them into the tug of war between the glory and the despair that is adolescence" (58). At this point we struggle with the difficult transition from possessing a "public life" to desiring a "private life." "Entrance into school gave children in middle childhood a public life apart from their families. Now, in adolescence, a storm brews over their rights to a private life apart from their families" (59).

We must not be too hard on our children or ourselves during this difficult time. This transition is extremely difficult but the potential reward is extremely important: "Adolescence is not planned. It happens. Admission to it is without intention, and undertaken without a guide. Its ultimate goal could not be more important: to attain the possibility of living one's own life" (60).

Settling into an independent life is often accompanied by a major blow to independence - marriage. Marriage demands that each partner sacrifice their selfhood to create a new oneness. "Marriage is not a love affair. It is a family affair, more, at times, like an extremely severe trial to be endured with all of its pain and turmoil. Yet, it is in marriage that people encounter one of the most deeply absorbing experiences in being alive - subordinating the instinct of self-preservation to an overwhelming desire to please and help another" (89).

"It is high noon when men and women are in their forties, the halfway point of their lives. Everything they have been preparing for in a worldly sense has arrived, has not arrived, or, as they begin to suspect, may never arrive" (97). Another separation usually occurs at this time - the loss of parents. "The death of an aged parent is a sobering fact that thrusts the members of the family into a stark confrontation with reality. To their surprise, the older ones realize that now they are the senior members of the family" (108).

As old age approaches, more than half of one's life - one's work - is eliminated. "By late adulthood, men and women are not strangers to separation, with its sequel of loss, dependence, initiative, and independence. But the separation of retirement is different. Now they are on their own, expected nowhere, needed by nobody, and responsible only to themselves" (114).

Retirement forces a person to construct an independent inner life. The freedom to live without all the demands of work presents a person with new choices: "After you have done all that, what then? How do you want to spend your life? What attracts you? What makes you happy? Money buys choices but not happiness" (115). Without the status, authority, and recognition that were associated with our job, who are we? When others forget, who will remember us?

It is at this stage that grandchildren can be such a particularly delightful blessing.

Only a grandchild in earliest childhood will listen attentively to where we have been and what we have done and believe every word. A small child is a true believer, and there is no more devoted audience. So, it happens that in the late afternoon of adult life, enthusiastic welcome is offered by one at the beginning of life. Both old and young person, free of external demands, have unhurried time for each other. Each is engrossed in the adventure of his own life. (117)

Hopefully, the constant experience of change with its painful separations teaches us to be flexible and appreciate the differences of others. If we have learned to desire to love more than desire to be loved, we have come a long way in our journey.

When we look at our thoughts rather than think them, how judgmental are they? Do we criticize others in our minds, even though we keep strict control of our tongues? Are we surprised at the amount of space that judgment and condemnation occupy in our thoughts? How much time and energy do we waste in explanation and justification? Why do we bother? Why not let it be? What are we trying to prove? And why do we hurt ourselves by comparing? Is it not enough to see it? And how much time do we wasted over choices that may never be ours to make?

We begin to realize that the composition of our thoughts and feelings is no different from those of our neighbors - it is the human condition. This revelation is profound and extremely humbling. We are not unique, after all. (129-130)

© Richard J. Vincent, 2004