Transitions

Lots of people are transitioning these days. More and more of my conversations with people revolve around "what will I do next?" or "I'm leaving my job and I am not sure what I should look for next."

There isn't a more stirring or meaningful transition that the one we experienced last monday night. In the space of one hour, we went from mourning the loss of thousands of soldiers and terror victims to the elation of celebrating the founding of the State of Israel. In this transition from Yom haZikaron (Israel's memorial day) to Yom Haatzmaut (Israel's independence day) I found the profound and the mundane.

On the profound level, the State of Israel recognized that all extreme happiness comes after misery. The dark before the dawn. Jews suffered beyond comprehension right before the founding of the State of Israel. Could we have succeeded in starting a new Jewish state without the tragedy? We will never know. What we do know for sure is that millions of people lost their lives in the Holocaust and then thousands more in the fight for independence. And the struggle continues. Israel has been doomed to sacrifice her people in her continuous fight for survival.
The two go hand in hand.

On the mundane side, perhaps there is no causal connection between suffering and elation. Yet, they seem to come together. Maybe we rally our human spirit in the face of pain and that is what lifts us to the next heights that perhaps we would not have reached for if we were comfortable. Maybe we just have to accept pain as the dark side of joy. Much like accepting evil as the dark side of goodness.

These thoughts can be are helpful when we are in transition. We naturally want to turn our backs on where we came from -- forget the pain of: losing a job, wasting years in a job that was not meaningful, confusion -- and focus solely on where we are going. Yet, like every leadership issue - you cannot get to where you want to be unless you know where you are right now. Use the past. Mine it for talents, passions, clues to where you should head. Embrace the pain as a means to discover the joy.