flux

Liminal: It comes from the Latin limen, or threshold. I love the way the word rolls off the tongue, but I also love its significance, especially at this point in my life. "Liminal" refers to transition, to intermediacy.

The word came up time and time again in my Fairy Tale course during my last semester of college. There was something incredibly poetic about ending my university experience with a class about childhood stories. We read countless tales and interpreted their meanings through psychological analysis, symbolic references, and intuitive techniques, giving the tales a more mature depth in our understandings. The best part of the tales' recontextualization was that old familiar yarns like “Cinderella” and “The Three Little Pigs” were notably still pertinent in our lives as young adults.

Of all the themes we addressed, the most common was that of transitioning, of being in a liminal space or phase, and forging a path through the unknown. What could be more unsettling and unpredictable then leaving an almost 20 year occupation as a student and finding yourself thrust into the post-collegiate world? Yet the fairy tale promises happiness at the end of every liminal journey.

I've decided that I don't believe in the fairy tale “happy ending," but that is only because, in the wise words of lyricist Dan Wilson, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Too true, Dan. Endings lead to beginnings, which lead to endings--and so what is at first scary about "the unknown" becomes oddly predictable. There is no stability in life, but rather a constant flux of everything always. What is alive must necessarily grow and change and regenerate, which is beautiful and amazing. Unless you're graduating from college and you don't know what you want to do with yourself. Then it is terrifying. 


I did my best to assert control over my situation. I got a paid internship right out of college, which was supposed to lead to a job and therefore stability. Scary state-of-unknown averted. But then about a month into my internship, I got off the waitlist for the Taglit-Birthright trip I had applied to back in February. This wouldn't just take me off the path of predictability, this would flip my world upside down. 

The email read, “If you can be spontaneous, you can still get to Israel in 2012! Birthright Israel has added more trips for August and October 2012 and we want you to go this year…Interested?”

Interested? I considered this a gift, a challenge. After all my efforts to be stable and predictable, spontaneous was exactly the sort of invitation I needed. As soon as my Summer commitments are fulfilled, I will have exactly a month to prepare for my trip. As timing will have it, my flight also leaves the day before my 25th birthday, another transition of sorts. I love the poetry of this situation. 

I’m taking off on my own and traveling for 9 weeks, first with the Birthright group and then solo in India and Thailand. I have no idea what’s going to happen while I’m traveling, but my

intention will be to relax into unpredictability and to learn absolute presence in each moment. With my eyes, ears, and heart all open, I'm sure I will have much to learn. And as I travel through a part of the world I know only from stories, I'm sure I will have much to write, as well. Here's to the next phase.