Gotta do a back-story post on this.

Developmental psychology (specifically the work of Robert Kegan) offers a good way to understand the life transition Ms. Shellnutt described so eloquently.

(http://www.worldcat.org/title/evolving-self-problem-and-proc...)

Developmental psychology by stages isn't just for middle schoolers. It it continues until we close our eyes for the last time.

Lemme do some broad strokes on this, even though it grossly oversimplifies things.

When we're kiddos growing up, we go through a bunch of stages of socialization. Most of us emerge in our late teens and young adulthood into a stage Kegan calls "interpersonal." In that stage we define ourselves by our relationships. We learn to tell our own stories by telling the stories of how we relate to the people around us. "BFF" is a shorthand for that. In the world of social media, lots of followers / friends / links is a goal -- in itself -- of this stage. "I know this many people."

After a decade or so, may of us make a switch to a new developmental stage. Kegan calls it the "institutional" stage. Again, to oversimplify, in this stage we become our business cards or our families. We tell our stories by the institutions we serve and our relationships to them. Silicon valley rituals like deciding whether to have job titles are part of the dance of this stage. So is the glory that comes from having a short domain name. "I am the VP of design for ZZZ Corp" is a statement made into the matrix of the institutional stage.
"Work-life balance" is a dichotomy born of this stage.

There's another stage after the institutional stage. Kegan calls it the "interindividual" stage. The transition to this stage is often accelerated by a layoff. When ZZZ Corp takes away my business card saying "VP of design," that can trigger my transition to this new stage. "Wait! There has to be more to life than ZZZ Corp!" That's right. But could I possibly have felt that in my gut ten years ago? Probably no.

In this interindividual stage, we resume telling the stories of our lives by how people and institutions interact. This sort of thing often is mistaken for wisdom, and sometimes is wisdom.

The transitions between stages can be difficult and perilous times. Some people don't make the transitions cleanly. Ms. Shelnutt's article describes some of the struggles of her transition into the institutional phase of her life. Being laid off "from a job I poured my soul into" is a nasty way to move into the interindividual stage. "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily" was Bluto's advice (John Belushi's character in Animal House), and that's a way to dull the pain of the stage transitions and slow them down.

These stages are all good. Not one of them is better than another.

Getting stuck in an age-inappropriate stage is probably not so good: a 40-year-old who spends a lot of time looking for Instagram clicks will make us wonder. (If you were wondering, yes I will probably look at this post in a few days to see if I have upvotes or responses. :-) :-)

Getting stuck with co-workers who mostly are in different developmental stages from ourselves can be frustrating. http://thedailywtf.com/ is full of stories of software screwups that stem from this frustration.

Are there any lessons besides "life sucks in many and various ways and then you die" to draw from this? Yes, of course. It can give us a broader perspective on each other and help us understand our own struggles with transition.

When we observe the behaviors of coworker and friends, the ability to tie them to a framework like this one helps give us a little empathy for them.

Ms. Shellnutt mentions church communities. A core mission of many congregations is to provide a way for people in the various development stages to interact with each other, and to support people having a tough time with their own stage transitions. But, in the 21st century people understand congregations as oppressive loyalty-demanding institutions. That understanding is often exactly right. Therefore, that source of stage diversity is unavailable to lots of people.

There aren't many stage-diverse institutions around. I wonder if places like my fictional ZZZ Corp could figure this out? It looks like Kegan and his colleagues have just popped out a new book on the topic.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/everyone-culture-becoming-a-de...