Living liminally

There’s a word that people who know me well hear me use frequently: liminal.

Liminal, meaning in-between; straddling the before and after; on the way somewhere.

It’s a word that denotes “becoming”, and is a state all growth-focused people experience.

The more I use it, I’ve realised it’s become a perpetual state.

I used to think of liminal moments as passing phases; the tunnel of neither here nor there, a place between destinations. But as I spend longer and longer in the liminal, I recognize it as not past nor future.

Is the liminal, then, not the present? This is where every spiritual tradition tells us we should aspire to live.

This is what I thought at first, as I reflected on it this past week. Then I understood that the present is only liminal as long as we are growing.

Without growth, the present is, at best, a protracted state of suspended animation; we are either stagnating or, worse, declining.

What isn’t growing is dying.

Sure, we all die eventually (what happens after physical death is another discussion), but I believe the quality of that journey matters.

By quality, I suppose I mean fulfillment. Not fulfillment in the sense of satisfaction, but of our own selves.

Did we figure out why we’re here?

Did we find out how much better we could be?

Did we invite light into the darkest parts of our selves, where we were so often stuck?

Did we learn how to improve our own lives through understanding how best we could improve the lives of others?

Did we get to know who we, uniquely, were at our best, not by seeing who others were, but by seeing ourselves?

A life not spent in the pursuit of knowing ourselves is, in my opinion, a life not lived. And to this end, what I can attest to is that the liminal is a deeply uncomfortable place.

There is no such thing as pain-free growth. Spiritual growth is as comfortable as an infant growing its own teeth. My journey of loving myself has been a long process of not liking what I saw, and being forced to change it. I know that this will never end, this cycle of dismay and humility.

So I choose a liminal life. In the pursuit of fulfillment, I doubt I will ever be satisfied.

Is this the point? I’m not sure, and it’s possible I’ll find out I was wrong. But I’m willing to see it and lose whatever else I need to as I’m moved, perpetually, from one state to the next.

I say that last part with a prayer because, dear god, it hurts every time. But living liminally means progress is assured so, at the very least, it’s always going to be ok and, at best, it’s going to get so much better.