The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives. (Taken from the Wikipedia article on “Liminality.”)
I do indeed feel a bit dissolved and disoriented. And it’s no wonder either: first graduation, then moving, and now trying to start a new career while the economy spins out of control… In the midst of this time of upheaval, I find both comfort and unease in the old adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” (Exhibit A: The Cubbies. Exhibit B: The sadly familiar, Chicago-apartmenty way I am currently sitting in my new home, listening to every word of my upstairs neighbor’s TV show and smelling her smoke wafting down the stairs.)
The ability of the universe to maintain equilibrium in the face of change seems to be especially powerful when it comes to unpacked boxes. No matter how many I unpack and break down there always seems to be a constant number impeding my progress around the apartment. As one yields to my efforts to find places to tuck its contents away, another sneaks up from the garage or out of a closet to take its place. I believe they have evolved the ability to reproduce...
What I’ve been tackling most recently are actually acquisitions from my parents’ attic. Boxes and boxes of college texts and class binders have appeared as if by magic and I find that I must finally cull them most dramatically. Reading these documents I hear ghosts from the past whispering to me of the meagerness of my successes and profundity of my failures. After skimming just a few of them, I already feel an overwhelming need to fall on my knees and say Mea Culpa! for all my grammatical sins. I want to plead forgiveness for never mastering the hyphen and for the hubris of such embarrassing essays from High School as “Malapropisms Happen (Even to Me!).”
Ridiculously bad as the High School writing samples are (and I’m pretty sure that they were kept as examples of the cream of the crop, which makes it worse), I find myself really ashamed as I read over the comments of dear Dr. Poole on my college music history papers and exams. The disappointment drips from notes chastising me over and over again for my inability to make my own analysis and take intellectual risks. “…Do you learn only what I tell you to?” (Well, I was carrying a 21 credit class load… so the answer probably was, “Yes?”)
I’m sure I bridled at such comments at the time, but now I know that she was only trying to give me the tools to be a scholar, tools I never mastered. I want to apologize for not living up to my potential, for playing it safe, for lacking the intellectual curiosity, capacity and fortitude she thought she could manifest in me. I recall her telling me just before I graduated that I had done something in my own “inimitable way.” In hindsight, her tone was a touch sardonic instead of complimentary.
And, oh yes, the more things change… Here I am again, brought as far by my excellent teachers as they could take me, and once again having to take the next steps on my own. Once again facing my inadequacies of courage and imagination. Seeing where I want to be, knowing how far from that I am, and simply unable to envision how I will ever get there. In this liminal place between school and licensure I am afraid. Afraid that even with all of the knowledge I worked so hard to obtain this past year I will be unable to find the spark of insight to apply it. That once again I will fall far short of expectation.
That must not happen! I can choose not to repeat my past mistakes, to be free of my self-imposed limitations. This time I must not fail to cross the threshold, to run the race to the end. This time I must see the stars below me and leap into the abyss anyway, knowing that there is not so much difference between flying and falling, that both will take me to new adventures, new perspectives.
This time I simply must not fail… to become.
In my own inimitable way.
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