Chaos is not noise, it’s signal; disorder is not a mistake, it’s a design element. If we view these periods as aberrations, we risk them becoming missed opportunities. If we view them as openings, we just might open up to them. Transitions are not going away; the key to benefiting from them is to not turn away. Don’t shield your eyes when the scary parts start; that’s when the heroes are made.”
The quote is from “Life is in the Transitions” by Bruce Feiler, which I recently finished. The book was in the display window, and I was unfamiliar with it, but I thought the release of this book was timed to perfection.
The core premise of the book is that life is defined by transitions which we must accept and convert into fuel for remaking our lives. After interviewing hundreds of people Feiler concludes that there are three phases of transition: the long goodbye, the messy middle, and a new beginning. When people successfully navigate these phases they have usually chosen one or more of the ABC’s of navigating a transition which are Agency, Belonging, Cause. Feiler defines those terms in the following ways:
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Agency - Autonomy, freedom, creativity, mastery; the belief that you can impact the world around us, which can lead to fulfillment
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Belonging - relationships, community, friends, family; the people that surround and nurture us and help us feel needed
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Cause - a calling, a mission, a direction, a purpose; a transcendent commitment beyond yourself that makes your life worthwhile because giving ourselves to a cause helps us feel part of something larger.
I think that society as a whole is at the beginning of the messy middle, and this societal transition is forcing a number of individual transitions. As we move through this moment of chaos and disorder, I think Feiler’s framework can be useful.
In fact our school and many of those we work with are leaning into the framework without necessarily realizing it. Our school’s mission is to “develop people who believe that the world can be a better place, and that they can be a part of making it happen”, so we have always tried to build in students the belief that they can impact the world in a positive way. We also emphasize that there is no “world”, there are just people, so when you do something positive for a person, you’ve made the “world” a better place. We feel that this helps build belonging and can also give people a cause. Human agency has always been at the center of the mission, but this year we are trying to get even more precise about it.
We are working with a team from Stanford to develop a construct of human agency that can be taught and assessed in schools. Also in partnership with Adam Green at Georgetown and Roger Beatty at Penn State, we are co-designing with students a course we call “Humans in Charge”, which is explicitly aimed at helping students maintain creative agency while working with AI. We are also working with Isabelle Hau on a relational intelligence lab where students and teachers co-design learning experiences to build relational intelligence. We believe that relational intelligence is a mechanism for agency, and we want to make sure that human agency is not anchored in an individualistic view of the world.
Our school and our work fits into the ABC framework very nicely, which one would think is a great signal that this book was released at the perfect time, as it can help individuals and organizations through this transitional moment in society. While this framework is very helpful, I am reminded that the premise of the book is that life is in the transitions and transitions aren’t going away, so even though this moment may feel particularly “transitiony” it’s really not, it’s just life. This idea was further reinforced when I realized the book was not a new release and in fact was written in 2020. Oooofff.
Key takeaways from this post
- Agency, Belonging, and Cause are a practical toolkit for change. People who get through transitions well usually lean on at least one: a belief they can shape their world, people who need them, or a purpose bigger than themselves.
- A mission built on believing can make the world better (like we have at Design Tech High School) already puts all three ABCs to work. And, when “the world” just means the people around you, agency turns into belonging and cause.
- Our definition of Human agency is getting more precise and less individualistic. New work with Stanford, Georgetown, Penn State, and Isabelle Hau treats relationships as one of the ways agency works, especially alongside AI.
