The
Liminal State
A
2-pager by Ajit Chaudhuri – January 2024
I retired in September 2023! ‘What are you going to do?’
is a common question.
Views on how to spend one’s golden years (i.e., 60 years
plus and more likely to be in the market for Viagra than for adult diapers) vary.
Traditionalists think of it as the third stage of life, and suggested pathways
for this stage range from the grasshopper mode of traveling around, enjoying
oneself and blowing one’s nest egg to the ant mode of continuing to work, maximizing
revenues and leaving a stash for the next generation to blow. Modernists
suggest that it is a time to find oneself, learn new things, do woke stuff like
reduce carbon footprint, et al, and treat it like one would have a male
menopause, with or without a high-end motorcycle and a pneumatic popsy on one’s
arm.
I am yet to find my groove within this spectrum. I am
not, to my knowledge, in a state of penury and, with the spouse employed and
the children off the payroll, I’m damned if I’m going back to work as I knew it.
And, anyway, what would I do in the post-truth world of the future where ‘influencer’
(wtf do they actually do?) and ‘fluffer’ (if you don’t know what they do, I
recommend a detour into dictionary.com) are considered occupations. And the
thought of more travel after a career spent on the road, and paying from one’s
pocket for the pleasure, does not excite. Sitting at home and minding my own
business would be nice but for the reality that it translates into constantly
answering doorbells and dealing with an assortment of cooks, maids, workmen and
delivery boys, and one has no defense against invitations to social occasions (try
‘shove off, I’m working’ vs. ‘shove off, I’m reading a Millsie’ or ‘shove off, Man
U is playing’, and see the difference).
Today, in early January 2024, I find that I am in a
‘liminal state’, defined by anthropologists as the time when one must navigate
between a past that is clearly over and a future that is still uncertain. How
do I deal with this? Where do I begin?
A recently read article entitled ‘Why Career Transition
Is So Hard’[1]
was instructive. It suggests that, today, people are asking profound questions
about the work they do, how much of it they want to do, and the place it
occupies in their lives, and are alternating between changing jobs and careers,
pursuing opportunities for education, and making time for periods of rest and
recreation – this is because the accelerated pace of change is reshaping jobs
and organizations in ways that call for constant career re-invention. And,
while there is a lot that is beneficial about changing careers, chances are
that it is an emotionally fraught process that can be both exhilarating and
terrifying.
Why is the change so hard? The author describes two
challenges in career transition today. The first is that, with the rise of
non-linear career paths, many of the transitions we make have no immutable
series of steps for the change to be made and no telling how long it will take,
especially given that the direction of travel is often from large organizations
to smaller players and entrepreneurial opportunities, and from full-time to
fluid, individualized portfolios of gigs and part-time roles. And second, that
transition periods are now considerably longer, with vetting and interviewing
processes being more complex (with personality tests and skills assessments and
whatnot), leading to more time for feelings of loss, anxiety, irrelevance,
insecurity, et al, to set in.
The author suggests that the earlier methods of managing
transition are no longer tenable. Career change is now an iterative process, we
can’t wait to line up our ducks in advance, we have to figure things out over
time and make adjustments as we go. The transition period is a time to hustle,
to follow our noses, to activate our networks, and to try different things
simultaneously without settling for one. It is a liminal state.
How do you maximize the utility of the liminal state? The
best way is to treat it as an ‘identity time-out’, where you let go of your
commitment to who you used to be and focus creatively on who you might become. To
do this, you need to ‘diverge and delay’ – recognize that traditional
plan-implement thinking only gets you more of the same, and experiment with
divergent possibilities while delaying commitment to any one of them. You need
to ‘exploit and explore’ – leverage old skills and pivot to new things
simultaneously. And you need to ‘bridge and bond’ – create or reactivate
relationships beyond current social circles while also deepening ties and
finding community within close circles of kindred spirits, including others in
transition and one’s own spouse.
I am more confident now – looking at retirement through
the lens of a career transition makes obvious its advantages in managing the
liminal state. With no financial goals to be met, no school fees to be paid,
and no loans on my head, my worst-case situation of spending my days alone with
an acoustic guitar, a collection of books, and Netflix for company, and of
waking up in the morning with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to meet,
is not unattractive. And avoiding being tied down professionally or
geographically certainly resounds, as does converting my various interests into
semi-paid and lightly committed work. And yes, it may not lead to resolution in
the form of a worthy occupation in the near future that will make me rich and keep
me fulfilled, but so what – I can handle being a bum until things work out. So,
ladies in need of a sober escort to social occasions, blues singers looking for
an accompanying guitarist, football managers in need of a turn-around
strategist, and so on – I’m the man (for now).
[1]
Ibarra, Herminia; Why Career Transition Is So Hard; Harvard Business Review of November-December
2023
