I couldn’t joke this one away

Sometimes when my wife and I are watching a movie, before I realize it, my emotions are engaged and I fight back tears.

It’s not unusual for her. But for me? It happens less often.

Sometimes emotions can't be joked away—they're signals that we're in the messy middle of a lifequake that demands to be felt.

But when it does, I have this habit. It’s obviously something I learned to do a long time ago. It helps me gain control of my detached emotions again—I’ll crack a joke.

Make myself laugh.

Anything to push the emotion back down where I can control it.

I am not saying it is healthy… It’s just what I do.

This morning, I found myself in that exact predicament. Except I wasn’t watching a movie.

I was sitting with my coffee, reading Bruce Feiler’s book Life Is in the Transitions.

Feiler explains that the average person experiences about three dozen disruptors in their adult life.

That’s roughly one every twelve to eighteen months.

Most of these?

We handle them.

We adjust.

We lean on our people.

We recalibrate and keep moving.

But now and then, one disruptor—or more often, a pileup of two, three, or four—rises to a level that truly destabilizes us.

Feiler calls these lifequakes.

Reading about these lifequakes hit a nerve. Before I knew it, I was fighting tears.

Somehow, a joke this morning just didn’t make sense.

• The average person goes through three to five lifequakes in their adult lives

• Each one lasts an average of five years

• When you do the math, that means nearly half our lives are spent responding to one of these episodes

Nearly. Half. Our. Lives.

“You or someone you love is almost surely going through one right now,” Bruce says.

Part of the purpose in my writing this post is to understand why this reduced me to a pile of emotion.

I am not sure…

It has something to do with finishing well, I know that.

No joke could save me this time. Just tears.

I am wondering if it is the uncomfortable realization that I’ve been living through something I didn’t have words for?

I’ve spent so much of my life thinking I needed to “get through” the hard stuff faster. To bounce back quicker. To have it all figured out.

The joke, the deflection, the quick pivot to something lighter—these are my tools for staying in control.

But what if the hard stuff—the lifequakes—aren’t detours from my real life?

What if they ARE my real life?

What if learning to navigate these transitions is the real work of living? Not something to rush through or joke away, but something to sit with.

To feel completely.

To master.

To honor.

Feiler says it plainly: “Lifequakes may be voluntary or involuntary, but navigating the transitions that flow from them can only be voluntary.”

And then he goes on to say that, since we face more of these experiences than we expect, we must master the skills necessary to pass through them. These lifequakes may be involuntary but the use of these necessary skills cannot be.

“We must choose to deploy [these] skills,” he says.

We can’t always control the lifequakes. We can’t joke them away. But we can learn to navigate them. We can develop the skills. We can choose how we move through them.

Skipping the messy middle

After collecting hundreds of life stories from people across all 50 states—people who lost homes and limbs, changed careers and genders, got sober and got out of bad marriages, Feiler discovered:

Every major life transition has three phases:

1. The Long Goodbye—When you mourn the old you. When you acknowledge what’s ending.

2. The Messy Middle—When you shed old habits and create new ones. When nothing feels solid yet.

3. The New Beginning—When you unveil your fresh self. When the new story starts to take shape.

Most of us want to skip straight from the Long Goodbye to the New Beginning. (Or, in my case, joke our way through it.)

But there’s no shortcut through the Messy Middle. That’s where the real transformation happens.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s where the tears are supposed to come.

I want to be done pretending the lifequakes aren’t happening.

I want to be done rushing through the Messy Middle like it’s something to be ashamed of.

And I want to be done using humor as a shield when what I really need is to feel what I’m feeling.

I want to…

God knows I want to.

Emotion.

Bruce says I should begin to:

✅ Name it. A lifequake is a lifequake, can I call it that? Not “a rough patch” or “just stress.” A lifequake.

✅ Feel it. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when my instinct is to crack a joke and move on.

✅ Learn the skills. Feiler’s research shows there are specific, learnable skills for navigating transitions. What are they? Can I commit to mastering them?

✅ Share my story. Because if nearly half our lives are spent in these transitions, then we need to stop treating them like secrets and start treating them like the shared human experience they are.

Can I get a witness?

Are you in a lifequake right now?

Maybe it’s one big thing. Maybe it’s a pileup of two or three or four disruptors that have left you feeling destabilized.

If you are, I want you to know:

You’re not behind.

You’re not broken.

You may be in the messy middle.

And it’s ok.

The stories we’re tempted to hide—or joke away—are often the ones that hold the most power.

Not just for us, but for the people we love.

For the legacy we’re building.

For how we finish this one precious life.

Capeesh?