There is a special moment at every threshold, the moment when neither the place you are leaving nor the place you will arrive have a hold on you.
Take a breath there, in that limbic place before you cross the threshold.
Sometimes we are precipitated into new landscapes by tragedy or joy.
Bereavement and falling in love both launch us into a world we couldn’t have imagined. And for a while, we flounder. The paths are unfamiliar, the rooms in the new house are not the ones we recognise.
I have talked to many people who say that even the transition from indoors to outdoors is a challenge and sometimes I am struck by that too. I look out of the window into a beautiful sunny day. But maybe the “me” who is indoors will change into something different if I step out into a different environment.
Some of my work is supporting people through the journey of bereavement. If you have spent time with someone during the very last days of their life, you will have walked the path of change with them almost to the doorway. While their task is to travel onwards, our job in bereavement is to find the way back. And the way back doesn’t take us to the same place, but to an unimaginable future with a gap where the person who has gone used to be.
Maybe we need to practice taking the step through even the simplest doorway consciously, allowing change to be a welcome visitor.
TS Elliot puts it beautifully:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS Elliot. Little Gidding
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