“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.” -Joseph Campbell
Life is rife with transitions. The small things—-waking up in the morning, driving to work, switching between tasks, going to bed—and the big things—growing older, building a career, moving into a new house, starting a family—are all examples of the ever turning wheel of change. Sometimes, though, the wheel is not so gentle. Illness, death, divorce, and other such crises can throw us for quite a loop. Even during positive transitions, a sense of ambiguity and disorientation is common. This is what anthropologists call liminality, or the space between the old and the new. How we face the Rubicon makes all of the difference in how we will emerge on the other side.
Joseph Campbell is famous for his work on codifying "the hero's journey." He called this the quintessential mono-myth across all cultures and all times. The specifics may vary but the overarching structure is the same. The hero or heroine must depart from their previous life, become initiated by overcoming challenge, and then return as a changed person. By definition the journey must not be a smooth one. The twists and turns are all part of the force that forges a new identity. The greater the struggles, the greater the potential for growth, but many a hapless hero has been crushed by the weight of seeking. There is really only one characteristic that can reliably predict success, and even then transformation is not certain: the degree to which we can voluntarily face life's transitions is equivalent to the degree that we will emerge whole on the other side.
The sad reality for most Western cultures is a lack of ritual around the passage from childhood to adulthood, arguably the most important delineation we could make in a mature, functional society. Incidentally, most of us are forced into acting more like adults by circumstances beyond our control. Instead of being properly initiated by our elders, we realize that often they are just as lost as we are. This can be a truly terrifying epiphany indeed, but it need not discourage us. This is just part of our own hero’s journey. There remains a certain unquenchable thirst in human nature to find higher meaning in life. The time-tested tracks of human history have not been erased merely because our culture has decided to abandon them. The rituals are waiting to be enacted by the ones ready to revivify them.
Encountering a sense of liminality during our trials and tribulations is a natural response of taking on ever harder challenges. Doubts will arise. What we do about them is what matters most. Taking a moment to pause and be present with the discomfort instead of running from it and then reflecting deeply on our own accountability —these are our greatest tools. The amount of ambiguity that exists today is unprecedented, but it will resolve. Either we will find our way through the wilderness or we won’t—there is no guarantee of the result. But we are certainly guaranteed to fail if we refuse to make the appropriate effort.
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