Being in liminality, a process of transitioning across boundaries and borders (Larson, 2014), is like going through a tunnel of uncertainty. At some point, we might find ourselves in an uncertain, uncategorized phase where it feels as if we go through a tunnel to get to the other side of a place or the next phase in our life. It is a point in between, a point of nowhere, where we might have mixed feelings about it. It is a process of a process.
I bring about this discussion as I recalled my trip to New York City the other day. The bus moved through a tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel, to get to the downtown. I could see the modern, big city of New York from the distance before getting to the tunnel. As the bus moved forward, it entered the narrow, dark tunnel with limited lighting. There might be alternative routes, but sometimes we do not get to choose, or sometimes we naively think we know what is best while in practice, it might not always hold. The thing was that I did not know how long the tunnel was, the signal got lost, and there was no scenic view to see along the tunnel i.e. nothing to enjoy in the middle of uncertainty. I come to realize that sometimes, we face this kind of situation in real life – the period of transition from one stage, one place, or one time to the other. We might have limited information, and it can feel congested. It might be uncertain how long it will take to get to the other stage, place, or phase. Nevertheless, we know that there will be lights that welcome us at the end of the tunnel.
If there are takeaways from this thought, it might be that we have to deal with and finish our affairs with the past before we are ready for the new ones. We have to leave the previous place before we get to the new place as we are unable to be in both places at once. The tunnel of liminality might be the bridge connecting the two, the process of a process of change that we are probably unaware that we might need. The next lesson would be to know that it is worth it to keep going on all the way to the bitter end. We cannot stop in the tunnel as it is not the destination, and the tunnel shall be passed anyway. The challenge is to have the consistency to keep going and to hold on to the realization that no matter how long it might take and how stressful it is to be under uncertainty, the tunnel is only a temporary way and a fleeting phase where we will be rewarded with something (hopefully) better after the tunnel.
As a closure, things might move rapidly in our lives, and we need to catch up with what is going on, that is, to be relevant. Being in a tunnel of liminality and getting through it. While keeping our hope alive – as cliche as it can be – it is still an undeniable truth that we need to afford throughout phases in our lives, including the liminality tunnel between those phases. Anyway, I ended up enjoying New York City, and it turned out to be a memorable experience.
References
Larson, P. (2014). Liminality. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA
hope. 