A staircase consists of small destinations that matter mainly because you leave them immediately.

Some things matter only as places you pass through. Each step is a real destination for a fraction of a second, and its whole value lies in being left immediately, so treating any of them as somewhere to stay would defeat the point of the structure. Transitions are supposed to be transitional.

You likely have stages in your life that work this way, the job that leads somewhere, the year that was a bridge. They are not failures for being temporary. The trouble comes only from mistaking a step for a floor, so it is worth asking, about your current situation, whether you are standing on something meant to be passed through.