The Beauty of the Liminal Zone

Photo by Nick Berger on Unsplash

Imagine yourself running along a paved path, going at quite a nice clip. Suddenly, you come to a wooded area, and the ground changes from paved to dirt. On top of that, a massive ole rainstorm has just passed through, so that dirt is pure mud.

You slow down. Your clothes get splattered. On some steps, your foot sticks and you have to stop and pull it out of the earth.

But as you do that, you stop and look around. You realize there are multiple paths, not just the one you’ve come from. The thought hits you that you couldn’t see paths like this as you ran so fast, but at your slower pace, they’re emerging. Some of them look quite intriguing. You find yourself stationary, but curious. What would it be like to take one of the other paths?

You’re all muddy; the structure of the path you came on is gone, but you can sense something else… possibility.

You begin stepping forward, a bit gingerly. No longer running, you walk along one of the new paths. You get a few steps in and realize you like some things about it, but not others. But behold, it’s unveiled a few new paths. You take one of those.

You keep going like that, taking some tentative steps, learning new things, and then hopping onto another path. As you go, you gain confidence. You’re enjoying this foraging. You could stay here for a while. Gosh, you begin to imagine, the ground is so soft here, you could even forge your own path. Just in your shape. What would that be like?

Welcome, my friend. You’ve entered the liminal zone!

Between an ending and a beginning there’s a third space we tend to forget. But it’s there every time, whether briefly or for an extended period of time. It goes by many names, but I love to call it the liminal zone.

Liminality is something each of us experiences twice daily: it’s the space between sleep and wake. And isn’t that space so beautiful?

But when it arrives in the midst of a life change, we tend not to look upon it as kindly. In fact, our first instinct is to rush right through it. Why? It feels different. It has less structure. The ground is softer. We can’t move as fast.

But all of those things that make it different, they’re what make it powerful. In The Art of Getting Unstuck, I love to say “the squishy ground is where the magic happens,” and that image of the forest runner is exactly what I mean.

If you find yourself in the liminal zone, welcome it. Embrace it. Indulge in it. Let yourself linger. I promise, if you can do that, there’s magic there.