"Liminality", Why Life Is In The Transitions

Originally Published April 11, 2022

Have you ever noticed how beautiful the sunset is while it shifts the day to night? How about how meaningful puberty is as it defines a lot of the moments that molded you into who you are now? If there’s something common between these two, it’s the in-between—the transition.

There’s a reason why the early Middle Ages were referred to as the Dark Ages and why it birthed The Renaissance—the rebirth of Europe. When people tell you to trust the process, what actually frightens you is the process, not the trust being broken. You could easily trust anyone depending on who they are. That leap of faith could be a medium for an end. This is what anthropologist Arnold Van Genne coined as “Liminality” in his book entitled Rites of Passage published in 1909. The Liminal Stage is a pivotal shifting moment that acts as a threshold between two realities. This marks being lost in the uncertainty where you have to traverse a path of disorientation. Ergo, debilitating in nature. Fellow anthropologist Victor Turner also describes this process of becoming as “Betwixt and between here or there.”

Liminoid on the other hand is an imitation of this transformation. This could be the game before winning a championship match or a male departing from being a boy to being a grown man. Music and dancing also exist as limonoids. The famous video game Minecraft is a liminal space because it's a playable infinity. Other occurrences such as illness, bankruptcy, death, and addiction are also limbos in this notion.

In your darkest hours, it might feel like an endless tunnel where your capacity for resilience is tested—an unforgiving tolerance of pain. Albeit the new self has not yet materialized, the old self has already faded resulting in all your assumptions being lost. As this unravels, you should seize the opportunities of a narrative to revisit and revise your life story. While your past is being broken down, adaptations emerge. A possibility of change where things turn and get interrupted. This relates to Zizek’s premise of pure becoming without being. Since your old maps, patterns and beliefs have proved to be flawed, this will serve as a turning point to a breakthrough.

The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the largest Liminalities of human history. Its transitory impact is comparable to Noah's Ark where nobody knows the way out and what used to be familiar is severed by chaos. These kinds of exceptional disruptions to the flow of life are catalysts to perpetuating human practices. A destabilizing transformative process heralding a new reality through disorientation.

New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler determined that there are 3 phases to navigate through the liminal states that he calls Life Quakes: The Long Goodbye, The Messy Middle, and The New Beginning. He argues that life isn’t supposed to be linear. In our modern world, not every middle-aged man experiences peaks in life. His study involved hundreds of interviews with over 6,000 pages of transcripts done over 5 years across 50 states of the USA.

Creativity is common in life quakes. This unsettling phase can be a long time coming so take time and cherish the moment. The wolf in the woods is what makes a hero and the only way is through. Without challenge, your story is merely a walk in the park. Consider this a metamorphosis into a new identity. First, in your honeydew list, look inward to move forward. Given that you can't unknow what you now know, it is your job to find its purpose. You may not be living the life that you expected because the axiom of your journey is hidden in a detour, a timeout, or a downtime.

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