Crossing a
Threshold
“He had
the vague sense of standing on a threshold, the crossing of which
would change everything.”
Kate
Morton (The Forgotten Garden)
Ah, thresholds, my
favorite topic—liminal spaces, thin places, thresholds. We
cross them every day without the slightest thought. Walking through our
front door, we traverse from outside to inside, from the unknown to
the known. Crossing a threshold happens any time we leave one reality
and step into another. It may be going from childhood to adolescence,
from single to married, from maiden to mother, or hot, young stud to
middle-aged man. Thresholds mark life passages. Do you remember your
thirteenth birthday? What a passage that was! You became a teen, and
almost over-night your body morphed into someone barely recognizable
as you. Or when you first married, and all the things you found so
sweet about your beloved prior to living with them 24-7, suddenly got
on your final nerve? Or when you brought your first-born home from
the hospital, and it hit you like a meteor that this wiggly,
dependent thing is now your total responsibility. Ah, yes. Thresholds
change everything.
I don't know about you,
but my first thought when crossing one of those major life thresholds
has always been, “What have I done?” or her sister, “What was I
thinking?” And the answer is usually something I don't want to
hear—like, “You weren't thinking, my dear. You were only
feeling.” Or, equally irksome, “Well, there's no turning back
now.” But, you know what, thresholds are made to be crossed. And in
the words of Kamal Renikant (Living Your Truth), “Confidence comes
from crossing thresholds.” Unless we're Peter Pan, or maybe Tinker
Bell, we have to grow up, and we do that by taking the next step.
We're coming up on one of
those threshold events—the turning of the year. Now is a good time to
set the stage for how we would like that new year to unfold.
Remembering that perceptions are everything, and that we create our
own experience of life, how would you like your world to be different
in the new year? How would you like to feel, look, and be during the
next twelve months? We don't just have 20/20 vision in hindsight, we
can hold a clear image and intention in foresight, too. Or we can
just wing it...
There will always be
surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant, but having a strong
direction in which to proceed gives us confidence that we can
influence the outcome. We have a little time yet to think about this
before the threshold is upon us. What can your heart and your head
agree to for 2016?
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment