ABSTRACT
Based on many years of research with different groups in diverse parts of the U.S., Becker shows that people move through their lives with a certain set of explicit or implicit expectations for each phase; and that such expectations determine the meanings assigned to specific events and the roles they enact in the course of their everyday experiences. Inner chaos results from unmet expectations, as individuals try to alleviate the feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, and depression that result. For Becker, these feelings come in response to the loss of their imagined future. Becker’s message, however, is one of optimism, not despair. She found that study participants who were successful in creating a new sense of order had found ways to redefine the meaning of the disruptions they were experiencing to allow them to reconfigure their expectations of both themselves and the world: “Efforts to reorder the world after a disruption begin with the body and after a period of chaos . . . efforts to integrate past and present are initiated . . . [and] notions of order in daily life begin to resurface and take shape” (Becker 1997:136). Reestablishing a sense of continuity requires abandoning the newly impossible old life story, and constructing a new one consistent with the new circumstances. Until the future has been reorganized and given new meaning with an altered set of hopes and dreams, moving ahead is almost impossible (Capps and Ochs 1995; Ezzy 2000).
