Afterword
My passion for surfing was greater than my fear of sharks.
—Bethany Hamilton
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.” But when one has just jumped to a new curve, plunging into the abyss of a transition, beauty isn’t the first word that comes to mind.
In music, a transition is defined as a moment of modulation, a passing from one key to the next. In physics, it’s described as a change which results in the transformation of physical properties such as ice to water to steam. When we write an essay, it’s the sentence or passage that connects one topic to the next. More generally, trans means “a going across.” Whether we are transplanting or transacting, exchanging ...