Of Transitions

This may be one of the worst analogies I've ever drawn, but please bear with me.

My generation, our generation, is the generation that can characterize and mark our childhood and teenage years with the emergence of computer technology. We were the first generation to be trained on old DOS operating systems, the first generation required to take courses on computer technology, the first generation blessed with the delete button, and the first generation trained in Microsoft Office.

I remember making my very first Power Point presentation in Middle School. I remember the class where I was taught how to create slides and how to use Word Art. I remember being graded on my ability to duplicate a certain number of slides in a certain amount of time. I can remember being charged with designing creative presentations, and being graded on how well said presentation "flowed".

Do any of you remember slide and audio transitions in Power Point? I can remember that no presentation was complete without slide and audio transitions. To really make your presentation sparkle, you would animate your graphics, text boxes, and slides. Your grade was often substantially better if you knew how to incorporate this fun feature into your presentation. So we would rush through our preliminary color schemes and blocks of text to begin work on slide transitions.

You were given options like: dissolve, checker-box, left fade, up-fade, vertical-bars, etc. I'm not sure but I believe these options are still available in today's latest release of Office. Anyway, back on point, we always added these slide "transitions" to our presentations. The seemed to make the project flow seamlessly and captivate our adolescent audiences when we had to actually make an oral presentation.

I can remember, as we grew older and more mature, we stopped using slide transitions. Is this true for you as well? We were no longer fascinated by the grey bars bouncing across the screen or the random checker-box that would blink into the next slide. We recognized that, in the "business world", people really just wanted the information explained to them. No one cared about fancy, fun transitions. In fact, they were often considered a distraction and, even stranger, often were characteristic of a poorly designed presentation.

So, what happened? Why did we stop using transitions? Why and when did teachers, business moguls, and higher-ups began to consider their use childish and sloppy? When did we stop being fascinated by these "transitions".

The simple answer is that we grew up. In the same way that cartoons don't captivate us in the ways that they used to, we grew away. We don't need cartoons to placate us anymore. We don't need transitions anymore. We are able to focus. We are able to move on often seamlessly. Is this a characteristic of adulthood - the ability to operate without the need for transitions.

I'm now speaking about our own personal lives in regards to schooling, jobs, and relationships. Do we need a transition when moving from one job to the next? Do we need a sparkly transition when moving from one relationship to the next? Speaking on romantic relationships - most people, after being devastated by the ending of a relationship often seek a "rebound" - a "transition". Personally, I find the need or use of a "rebound" to be somewhat immature.

Now before you get angry with me and call me names and say "who the hell are you to tell me that I'm immature", let me clearly define what a "rebound", a "transition", is. My best definition of a rebound would be when one person seeks to fill a void in his/her life by "filling" that void with another person, another presence, or another relationship. When a romantic relationship ends, especially for those of us who have been involved in substantially long relationships, there IS a void created. You have all this free time on your hands. You have to begin to formulate new plans in your own life. You have to try to look past the storm and either travel into a different clear plain or resolve to wait out said storm.

It is no secret that to fill this "void" with a new presence or relationship does make our "transitional" period easier. We can better function in our day to day. We can better mask our pains. We can better hide behind someone else. AND we can simply fill up the empty spaces in our own lives with someone new. The void is temporarily filled. Man was never made to be alone, so it's no secret that he would not want to deal with his own life or problems on his own.

To be clear - I'm not saying that it's always a good idea to face your problems head on - alone. I'm not saying that God hasn't placed people in our lives to help us through tough time - believe me, I know He has and am truly grateful for such friends. I'm not saying that we shouldn't "lean" on others. I'm saying that we shouldn't fill our void with another similar presence. We shouldn't "replace" said void.

If you know anything about "rebounds" or "transitions" you know that they often fail. Why is that, one may ask. I believe that rebounds fail because we don't enter into these new relationships primarily because we feel something real. We enter into these new relationships because they make us feel comfortable; they fill that void. They make us FEEL good. They make us FEEL safe. They make us FEEL better. Too many problems in our own lives and in our world are caused because we love doing what we FEEL. Instead of doing what you FEEL, do what is BEST, do what is RIGHT. To operate seeking to feel good or to satisfy your own selfish feelings is a mark of immaturity; make no mistake.

The need to immediately fill a relational void in one's life after a recent fallout is a characteristic of human immaturity in my opinion.

The "mature" thing to do, again in my opinion, is to spend a transitional time bettering oneself. Spend a transitional time bettering friendships. Spend a transitional time making new and meaningful relationships. If you can do this, if you can work towards your own goals, if you can strengthen yourself with the help of you friends, THEN you will come out, in a month, in two months, in three months, however long it may take stronger, defined, directional, intentional, and BETTERED.

Spend time seeking out what YOU want for YOURSELF. Don't surround yourself with influences and people who think they know the ways of the world. How do you know if you're being "influenced", because we often don't see it and argue that it's even happening. Take a look at your life, before you began to fill a void or make a change. See if that change has caused you to compromise your values, your morals, or your core beliefs. If that change has caused any of that, then I can promise you beyond any doubt that you, my friend, are being "influenced". You aren't making your own decisions, but rather feeding off the opinions and conclusions of others. This is a mark of immaturity.

Sorry - that was a tangent.

Anyway…. I hope you caught the gist of my analogy and were possibly helped through my ramblings on.

A final word.

For friends I know who struggle with this.

If you are someone who desperate clings to human relationships and still can't help wanting to immediately fill the "void", know that there aren't many relationships that came into full fruition without being grown from a seed. In the same way that trees that are uprooted and planted elsewhere often die off quickly, romantic relationships that begin abruptly often die. If you spend your transitional time cultivating or making new meaningful relationships, getting to know people, and planting seeds, you may find that one day one of these seeds could grow and bloom into something more. Simply stated, you need to be friends with someone before you can be anything more (in my opinion).

AND NOW…….for some good musics and a CRAZY AWESOME DANCE VIDEO!

A Little Shimmy Never Hurt Anyone (Passion Pit Dance)

Bo King - Brittany Delaney - Alex Sibley

Damion Suomi - Ghost

Joseph Arthur - Say Goodbye