The In-Between
Supernatural? Surreal? Or Just Where We Are
I had an off-schedule four-day vacation this past week, squeezed into what has proven to be anything but an ordinary January, and I found myself surprised by the unease it caused. I love escape. I love vacation. I love the longtime friends whose adventuring created a reason to gather on a quick timeline.
Who wouldn’t want to escape to a warm, lovely place in the midst of winter’s temperamental unpleasantries?
What I didn’t love, or look forward to, was the way a Wednesday-Saturday trip upended my intentional, hard-fought rhythms. Instead of regularity, I was signing up for travel disruption, for time I didn’t control, and most difficult for me, in-betweens.
People are fascinated with flux - the in-betweens created by shifting certainties and alternate realities. Countless books, films, and television shows feature flexible timelines, divided perspectives, multiple universes. They show up in sci-fi, horror, romance, drama, comedy, superhero fantasy (the Marvelverse). And now politics.
The stakes of flux creates tension, both exhilarating and exhausting, but I don’t much care for the supernatural of it all. I’m a realist. Time travel, space travel, continuums, interweaving and interlocking of realities - these need to come with a light touch before I can ordinarily embrace them.
Still, I resonate deeply with in-betweens. And I’m challenged by them.
While not necessarily “stuck” places, nor morally compromised ones, in-betweens set up conflicts between good/evil, real/unreal, understood/incomprehensible, here/there, then/now, etc. In my vacation moment, I felt myself neither at ease, nor uneasy, not purposeful, not aimless, just…helplessly in the middle somehow.
It’s hard to know how to exist neither here nor there. Though in truth, most of my life - most of any of our lives - are lived in such in-between moments: in transition, before making a choice or experiencing the aftereffects of one, awaiting consequences. It’s about time I started to find the magic there.
Liminal times and spaces are thresholds. Such in-betweens disrupt the familiar, show us change, but keep “normal” in sight. Like my out-of-rhythm vacation feeling, they can induce psychological discomfort. They can lead us to feel nostalgic, expectant, or disoriented. But they don’t have to mire us down or leave us wavering. In fact, they may be the best places to imagine possibilities.
When I’m not sure how to be, where to go, what to do, I have to slow down, stop, observe, wait, activate my senses, let my brain catch up. Moments spent like that are grounding, sometimes inspiring. They encourage me to commit or recommit. They remind me that I exist beyond the DOING in my life. The focus narrows to BEING.
It helps to become aware of my physical comfort as counterpart to the brain’s discomfort — I’m warm, dry, sheltered. The coffee and tea are within arm’s reach. I see the light play and change through the windows.
The magic is in the simple fact of my existence right now. If I find myself between choices, juggling conflicting ideas, or contemplating other worlds, that’s an inviting mystery. I may leap, move sideways, pivot, or turn back instead of marching onward. My pause on this threshold allows my brain to gather info and process my “What now? What next?” This in-between may change everything. I’m waiting for it. 😊
Hey Stepho! Good stuff and very much appreciate your memorializing the sensations. I think you're on to something, but I wonder if your real message is to be present? A moment is only an "in-between" if one constructs or elevates other moments around it?