liminal spaces

think train stations, waiting rooms, or school hallways at night

liminal spaces (noun, english) - places of transition; the time between what was and what comes next

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I find myself in constant reckoning with the liminal spaces we reside in, more so fascinated by the reality of their abundance in the emotional, physical, and metaphysical realms. 

For starters, our very existence in the present is in itself a liminal space between the past, the future, and the radical fantasies of our hopes and dreams. Every decision we make moves us into a temporal state of unknown consequence, almost as though our own decisiveness acts as a trapeze from which we are now launched into an air of unknown where a multitude of possibilities await. And when we fall back down, there’s another decision tethered to yet another trapeze awaiting us. Perhaps two at once, the left foot and the right foot flying in directions that may converge or diverge. Or three or five. Let the abstract imagination contort us for a second, as we imagine our head and arms fly in cross cutting directions.

Sitting with the uncertainty of being neither here nor there is admittedly, sometimes, difficult to swallow. It’s the hard hitting of the reality that we are not in control of consequences in the way that we are in control of our reactions. For the unavoidable reality of a liminal space is the unknowing of what comes next. Thus, the experience of life, a liminal space by virtue.

And within this large liminal space concept that we find our everyday decisions consistently shifting us from one liminality to another exists the liminal phases of our emotions.

What is anxiety but a liminal phase between a prior state of security and a future state of certainty?

What is grief but a liminal shift between having and the acceptance of losing?

What is euphoric happiness but a positive transitory blip between two unremarkable states of being?

And now even within these liminal entities of fleeting emotions exist the physical and tangible liminal spaces - transitory spots that contain some of my greatest writing and philosophical muse for they contain within a plethora of imaginative stories and paths waiting to happen. The in-between spaces where you’re simply just waiting as time moves you from one state of definitive being to another.

Airport terminals are home to some of the greatest love stories - mothers nostalgically looking at photos of their grandchildren through their device screens ready to reunite with them after a devious 16 hour flight, or a long distance partner anxiously waiting for a different sort of magical reconnection upon landing.

Hospital waiting rooms bear the sounds of nervously tapping feet against the same ground that both new lives cry out loud and some lives counting down minutes to the epic conclusions of their own battles and stories.

College grounds during graduation hold the end of existing in protective bubbles that the structure of education provides while unlocking the first step into the so-called “real world.”

Movie theaters when the ending credits are playing as we zap back to our everyday reality after a fantastical spell digital moving art placed on us for two or three hours alike.

Doorways. That is all, just, doorways. Neither here, nor there.

We wake up everyday to experience life in a liminal space with new liminal equations filled with their own liminal emotions and thought to create with it an entirely unique and never repeated set of liminal consequences. The sun rises and sets, and the process never ends. And to seek acceptance in the process and possibly, even, fall in love with it is to see the magic of the multiverse of weaving connections and possibilities liminal spaces and reality gives each of our lives. 

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What does existing in a liminal space mean to you? What sort of feelings does it bring to you? Do you perceive liminal spaces in the same way, or perhaps, differently? I’d love to hear your thoughts.