The space between

Why the moments that feel most uncertain are often the ones where we become someone new.

Liminal spaces are a funny thing.

We hate them.

They’re deeply uncomfortable. Our bodies crave certainty and safety. A Feng Shui expert told me once that this is why we should always seat ourselves with our back to a wall when working; you would never sit with your back to the entrance to the cave, she explained. It’s also, I imagine, responsible for the viral meme that dances around social media from time to time, deploring the men who take the seat at the wall when on a date as a core ick.

Substack is full of tales of liminal spaces. People changing jobs, and leaving careers, and moving countries. I have to admit, I devoured them when I first found this platform. I’ve sat in them myself, at different times - when first arriving in Australia, and making the decision to move from Sydney to Melbourne, and then leaving my corporate job.

I’ve always felt slightly embarrassed by these. I think the fact that my ancestors were often forced into displacement has made my own forays into liminal spaces seem self-indulgent. I didn’t have to leave where I grew up and move to the other side of the world. I’ve been blessed with the luxury of a passport(s) and education that gives me an unusually large number of options. Nothing could be further from the experience I would have had a century ago, and that knowledge makes me feel quite guilty sometimes.

Fifty-odd years ago, my mother and her family hunkered down in Austria after fleeing what was then Czechoslovakia, while they waited for a country that was willing to take them on. They were keen on Australia, but family legend says that my deeply impatient grandfather, annoyed by the length of the queues at the embassy, decided that enough was enough and they would go to London.

I’m not sure if it’s funny or fitting that I’ve ended up living in the place they had their eye on, and that I wouldn’t have existed if they’d been successful.

The mistake is thinking that liminal spaces are empty. They’re absolutely not - if anything, they’re too full! New possibilities, madcap thoughts, potential plans, fears, doubts… I don’t think my mind has ever been so busy as in the periods when I’ve moved country, job or (far too frequently) hit the road with no real plan whatsoever.

I think that when we’re between chapters, while we crave certainty, what we actually need are places to be uncertain. To experiment and meet people we’d never otherwise meet, test and fail. To try on ideas before they become identities.

Life on Magnetic Island has reminded me of the magic of third spaces and community.

More on island life next week.