Penny Post #9: Jeopardy
The sound of liminality.
I graduate college in thirty-five days. Just over one month before I take my final final exams, pack up my apartment, and hold my diploma in hand. Just over one month before I say goodbye to some of my closest friends, give some tight & tearful hugs, and look longingly in the rearview mirror.
For the past thirty-five days, I’ve felt as if toggling two worlds: past and future. I have had one foot in South Bend as a student and I have had one foot in California in the “real world”. My world thus far has felt pretty real and yet the foot in South Bend is bent as if to launch me forward, beyond it. It has been rather disorienting living in this liminal space yet I’m grateful to be both ready to say goodbye & ready to say hello.
The best way I know how to describe liminality is by sound. A sound you all have likely heard before.
Liminality “is a term used to describe the psychological process of transitioning across boundaries and borders. The term ‘limen’ comes from the Latin for threshold. It is literally the threshold separating one space from another” (Paul Larson).
Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
Dun dun dun dun da-dun dun dun dun
Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
Da-dun dun dun dun dun dun
You hear it too, don’t you?
It is liminal space: there, but not quite. Nor here nor there.
How might we live in liminality? Can we be in two places at once?
Well, no, which is why we are in the in-between.
I think we have to embrace both spaces. They can’t be mutually exclusive. Yes, I want to be present in my “now,” but I also want to diligently prepare for “then”! I will try to be present in the ways that I can - nights with friends, meals with classmates, weekly Zumba classes - yet I also must pack before the day I’m supposed to leave.
My life is paradoxical: goodbyes and hellos. Yet the paradox is rich with humanity.
Carl Jung, renowned Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst wrote:
Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.
I desire to live a full life, even if it means holding two competing worlds in harmony.
I graduate college in thirty-five days.
Thirty-five days of liminality, of paradox, of a full life.
In fullness,
Kiera