Part 2: Navigating Cliffs and Fog

6. Cliffs

My compassion for people going through a cliff has increased and deepened by doing this study. To harshly judge people for “not getting their act together” quickly in the shadow of a cliff reflects a profound ignorance of the often long and arduous process of getting to the other side of a significant cliff. If your life is knocked sideways or torn asunder by a cliff, and especially if that cliff come with mourning a loss and/or feeling the deep pain of grief, you can find yourself lost in the thick, murky fog for a very long time.

But the more I discussed the study with a wide range of people, the more I came to realize that cliffs appear to be a universal part of the human condition. The long arc of a life is never perfectly smooth. Look closely enough, and life is fractured, diverted, kinked, disrupted, severed, and transformed along the way. Look closer still, and people can find themselves reeling from cliffs and wandering in the fog, only to emerge in places they’d never imagined. Which brings us right to the cusp of another prevalent element of our human experience, the subject to which we now turn: fog.

I’ve noted how this research profoundly changed me and what I think about how life works. And one of the most significant transformations is my appreciation for the inevitable fog of life. Fog, I came to understand, is a common human experience, even for people who otherwise seem to have great clarity about what to make of their lives. And if episodes of fog enveloped even people in this study, none of us should judge ourselves harshly when we wake up one day to find ourselves befuddled and confused in the fog.

Across the study, we can extract a more general pattern: When lost in the fog, simply take what looks like the next best step. Not a big step, but a small step. Then reassess, step again, reassess, step again, reassess, step again. Keep moving in steps. And one day, the fog will begin to lift and the cumulative effect of all those steps will become clear.

The lives in our study show the great utility of moving in small steps when otherwise befuddled and uncertain. You don’t need to have the answers for what to do with the rest of your life. You just need to begin simplex stepping. You might get a long way down the road before you even know where you are going.

The cliff can be like being jolted out of a deep slumber by a screeching fire alarm. Gaining clarity and coming into frame can be more like waking up without an alarm clock; at some point, you are aware that you’ve shifted from sleep to wake, but you only recognize that fact after the shift from sleep to wake already happened. Or think of it as being out on a long walk that starts in the fog. As you ramble, the fog gradually lifts. There comes a moment when you realize that you’re already standing in bright sunshine with a long clear view. You know it happened (“I’m standing in the sun!”) but might not be able to pinpoint the precise instant that it happened.