Reclaiming Transitional Spaces
The hospital is a strange and other world. It is a world of slow motion, of going through the behaviours of living, but not really living. It is an alternate reality. All the functions of regular life are still happening yet these rhythms are mechanical and artificial.
It doesn’t feel like real life.
Everyone there is in a suspended state of existence. A transitional period of between. There is a lot of waiting, between sickness and health. Like being suspended at the top of a rollercoaster. Like when the sunlight has come up over the edge of the earth but the sun itself has not yet arrived. Like the pause between exhale and inhale. In-between. Transitions are strange realities. Moving between seasons, the perpetual expanding and contracting as you take hold and release, often at the same time. Like clutch to gas.
Being a global worker, if you want to call it that, means that so often we feel like we have another layer of thick transitional space. Becoming known but not fully known, participating in part but not in whole. Feeling at home but far from home, feeling unproductive and useless while also gaining in cultural nuance and communication. We are moving between home and here, then and now.
Sometimes I feel like I am just holding my breath. Waiting to get out the other side of another tunnel.
But transitions aren’t meaningless. It is not wasted time. Is it?
How do I reclaim the transitional periods of my life and settle into the tension? How do I see the opportunities for growth within the walls of my waiting spaces?
There is a world within the hospital walls with its own language of interdependence and meaningful connection.
Yes, transitions are scary, they are uncomfortable, but they are hopeful. There is presence available. There is vulnerability which brings awareness. An awareness of ourselves, and of others if we just settle in for awhile.
It is still awkward and often surreal and undoubtedly painful. But it is surely not meaningless.
After all, our entire existence is transitional. We are never free of it. It defines us more than being stationary does. We are never stagnant, neither is the world around us.
Maybe it’s time we ought to settle in to the discomfort.
How can you settle into your current season or situation of transition? What might it mean to stay here awhile and seeing the meaning in this waiting space?
