Linear lives?

We need to stop thinking of our lives as being linear.

What shape has your life story taken? That might seem like an odd question. How can a life have a shape? If we look more closely though, it becomes clear that we tend to think that our lives follow a specific pattern.

Usually, we think of our lives as being linear. We’re born, we get old, and we have various stages in between. This way of thinking is so entrenched in our culture that it seems completely normal. But in the past, people thought about the structure of life in a completely different way.

Early civilizations in Babylon and Egypt believed that life moved in cycles along with the changing seasons. People were part of the circle of life, repeating the same rituals every year.

In late antiquity, this changed. People started thinking more linearly, influenced in part by the growing popularity of the Bible, which depicted a linear historical progression through the ages. By the early modern period, this linear conception of life had become cemented, with people seen as partaking in a series of stages, progressing from youth to marriage to old age.

With the rise of the industrial era in the nineteenth century, people became obsessed with the notion of time. The use of pocket watches became widespread in the 1800s. For the first time people could plan their lives to the minute.

The notion that our lives follow a linear trajectory has been developed over centuries. The problem is, our lives don’t follow a predictable progression through fixed stages. Unpredictable transitions are the norm, not the exception. And these transitions can happen at any time in our lives.

Just consider the age range of people having babies, which today typically spans from late teens to early forties. We’re fascinated by the idea of the “midlife crisis,” but who’s to say when exactly that is anymore?

If change and disruption are actually the norm, we need to think differently about the shape of our lives, and throw away the old idea that they will follow neat, linear paths. We need to come up with some more creative stories.