The In-Between

Christmas is over and the New Year has not yet begun. All the rush and excitement is finished and we are caught in the in-between of festivities. Yet we can cherish these days for the quiet and rest they provide. Free from obligations, we can lie in late and indulge our lassitude. This social limbo is not a penance but a privilege.

For those with chronic illness and deteriorating conditions; however, life can be a sort of limbo, but not of the positive kind. We exist in a sort of shadow land between that of good health before and the fear of the future to come – a sort permanent dusk. The bright day is over and all that awaits is darkness.

Resting in the Dusk

For a long time, I felt this way: waiting for the next relapse, the next diminishment of my abilities. And each day that I was spared was a bitter-sweet reprieve. As anyone waiting for a decision knows, relief that the worse has not yet happened is tempered by the increased anxiety that it might. In my case, it was the belief that it will. Degenerative diseases are not known to go backwards. So I had to make a decision. I could despair or I could learn to rest in the uncertainty.

I chose the latter.

It has taken many years and a great deal of reading, talking and contemplation, but I am beginning to feel at least a little more comfortable in this gentle dusk. How? By adopting two very helpful techniques. The first is to live in the present. (For anyone interested in a brilliant guide to this kind of meditation theory, I recommend Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now.) When you are able, even for a moment to live in the now, during that time, fears for the future melt away. As a bonus, life feels infinitely more beautiful and precious.

The second, I suppose, is acceptance. With the affluence and privilege we enjoy in the West, we often feel affronted when things don’t go the way we expect. Those in less fortunate parts of the world are all too aware that life goes awry, health is precarious, life difficult and as a consequence are far better equipped to deal with life’s unpleasant surprises. And we can learn from them. Adversity is not to be denied or feared but embraced as something that simply is.

I kicked against my diagnosis for a long time – I had such plans! I was angry at the universe, fate, my own body for being so pathetic and weak. Of course, none of this helped me one iota. If anything, it made things worse.

The Liminal Space

Dawn and dusk are known as liminal spaces – an in-between time; a transition from one state to another. The word is derived from the Latin for threshold, so this place of waiting becomes a doorway to a new state of being.

In anthropology, it refers to the middle stage of a rite of passage. At this point, the participant has embarked on their journey but has not made the transition that will take him/her to their destination and the status that accompanies it.

Most of us are uncomfortable within the in-between, the liminal, but they are places where we get an opportunity to stop and think. As we head towards the New Year, we can use this time to do a good life-edit rather than make up resolutions we will break before the month is out. If we can learn to rest in the dusk, in uncertainty, life will offer up any number of solutions.

These are thresholds we can chose to cross or hover around. If we cross, we may well have to navigate the night for a while, but at the end, there is the promise of dawn.