Transition

To go across

As a trans person, I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about the word ‘transition.’ A gender transition, or to be transgender–it’s no accident that both of these grammatical constructions utilize the Latin prefix of ‘trans’, which roughly means ‘across.’ Paired with the Latin ire, which means “to go”, transition’s etymology is roughly “to go or cross over.”

What I find interesting about the word and its use is where the dividing line between ‘everyday change’ and transition ‘proper’ lies. Arguably, we are all always in transition: mentally, physically, and emotionally, we are in a state of constant flux. But while it would sound appropriate to say “I’m transitioning jobs right now,” or “after becoming a parent, I’m experiencing an enormous transition in my sense of self,” it would strike us as odd to say “I’m transitioning from the bedroom to the kitchen,” or “I’m transitioning from being calm to being angry.” In the latter instances we would simply say that we are going to the kitchen or that we are getting angry. 

The difference between the first usages and the second usages is one of weight. We feel it is appropriate to use the word transition when it refers to major life events, but not the everyday minutiae. We are protective of the word, as though we don’t want to dilute it from overuse. 

If we accept that delineation, then we can use the word transition as a kind of prism for cultural values (another thing that’s constantly in flux). Where and when we use the word transition alerts us to what we as a culture deem to be important. In the United States, we use the word transition most frequently in relationship to career and to identity. In fact, perhaps it’s better put in slightly starker historical terms: in the United States, we use the word transition most frequently in relation to career or work, with gender transition in recent years becoming more and more of the common parlance.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Our culture constructs identity through career. We see this through the ubiquity of asking strangers “what they do” as the most common form of small talk, we see this in the enormous pressure to align our values and dreams and innermost self with how we make money, we see this objectively in the breakdown of the hours, of where the majority of Americans actually devote the majority of their time. 

I’m not sure I have anything beautiful or profound to add to that dreary conclusion, other than to posit the question of whether beginning to use words in a different way can change culture or whether culture needs to change in order for words and their usage to shift. (Something to mull over).

But I would like to spend a moment thinking about the concept of “crossing over.” The difference between ‘to go’ and ‘to cross over’ is a difference in landscape. To go is a blank action. It is pure movement, irregardless of what it is in relation to. To cross over implies there is something to be crossed. A chasm, a gap, an obstacle of some sort. This adds two layers to the word transition. On the one hand, it means that transition asks more of us: whether physically or mentally, when we transition we have to traverse an unknown and potentially scary path. It also divides our future self from our past self. If we have crossed over, then what once separated us from who we are now is now in the rearview mirror, a blockade to what we were. Transition is division.

Transition is a choice, and all the work that goes into making it, enduring it, and embodying it.