Writer Wander 011 - The Liminal Phase of Life

The Threshold Stands before you...will you cross it?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Writer Wander Eleven. Today, I guess we're going on a bit more abstract angle. We're going to be talking about choice, potential, and liminality. For circumstance the due to circumstances that go beyond what I'm willing to reveal on this podcast, at least so far, I've had on my mind the idea of the current state of life that I find myself in. The current age I find myself in. And you know, as I mentioned before, I am in my 20s. And I think that the 20s are a very important period because, in a very real sense, they are that last part of your life in which you can hide behind the potential of the kind of person that you're gonna be. And it's a time period that, at least symbolically, is associated with a period of time in which you need to start becoming someone. No longer can you get by on the promise of a person that you could be, rather, you have to be a particular kind of person. Because all of these things about hiding behind your potential and what you could be, these were things that got you by in your first and your second decade of life. By your twenties, which is your third decade, by then, at least the way that our culture treats it, and probably how it was treated historically, by then it seems that the horizons have to become more realistic somewhat. They have to narrow. They have to start zoning in on a particular mission, a particular purpose. And uh I have been thinking about this again for reasons I won't exactly mention, but what I can mention is that one of the things that I I have a hard time giving up is this idea of this boundless potential that that lies ahead of me, that lies ahead in in my life. And it that idea is something that gives me comfort, and also the idea of just being able to to reinvent myself, to become a different person, to assume a new way of life, a new a new means of doing something, that if I get stuck in a particular place, I can I can always leave through my through my effort. These are ideas that are very attractive to me. That you know it gives me a level of control that not only do I enjoy having, but I I desperately do wish to have for what I perceive to be my my own health. But I also realize that on the other hand, it is it is a sign of immaturity to not want to give up this willingness and this this comfort of potentiality. After all, your potential is only worth something so long as you actually channel it into something, so long as you put it into practice. The purpose of the potential is not just to dream about what could be. At some point, you have to put things into a given perspective. And you know, I remember a lot of the dreams that I had concerning the way that my life would look like when I was in my mid-20s, which is where I'm currently in. And some of those things came true, a lot of them haven't. A lot of the and a lot of the things that that haven't are things that are very important to me. Where I have to settle down into something. Or uncontainable person, right? But you know how do I put it? How do I put it? It feels like it's harder to dream nowadays. It's harder to dream. You know, some there are just some some phrases that well perhaps logically they they don't get at everything that you're trying to get at. But when you say them, when you speak them, they feel they feel right. Like this is the true on the most fundamental level, the most fundamental understanding and and comprehension of the idea that we're trying to get across, and it's that idea that it's harder to dream, and a lot of the hope that I had in my life was on that potential, and I think that the great difficulty is in in finding a way something else to transmit that energy to because you know, on the one hand, I know a lot of people listening to this uh would probably think that there's there's nothing wrong with me just taking more time to you know to do stuff or you know, not feeling this pressure to achieve, and there's some truth to that, but I feel that in today's current age, in the society that we live in, uh we often make the the mistake in the opposite direction of taking things too slow, of not realizing that you know, yes, there is a time limit for for certain things, there are certain things that are best off with you doing them in a particular period of time, and I'm not just talking about you using wasting your 20s on like just random adventures and and random quests and random things you want to do. Rather, I'm talking about there are meaningful and important things during this fundamentally transitional period of our lives that we have to settle through. And we can't just be wandering through everything. At one point you have to abandon the promises of the person you're gonna be and become someone, become that person, become that that person. But that allure of the transitional state, it's it's always there. It's a very romantic thing, isn't it? You know, this idea that you're not quite pinned down yet, you're not quite defined yet, so it gives you the perception of a flexibility that could be turned to just about anything, but that's the trap, isn't it? The trap is that when you get so enamored with that flexibility, you end up ruining its purpose, and its purpose is to be put to use at some point. Right. So those are it's it's hard to dream. It's hard to dream. I often find myself, especially recently, struggling to, you know, mentally return to some childlike innocence that may or may not have existed, but on occasion I feel I don't know how true this is, but I feel just random glimpses of emotion and sensation of what it was like to be a child, or what it was like to be a young boy who had very few concerns, and it happened to me. It happened to me. It's almost like for for a few seconds, like I could be going on a run or something, you know, but for a few seconds I am returned to the person that I used to be, and I I I find myself missing those problems that I used to have. I find myself missing those those things that made me cry then, that in hindsight, when I compare them to those things that have made me cry now, they seem like they seem like nothing. They seem laughable. And obviously that also opens the question of what things, if I look at them with hindsight that I'm going through right now, a few years from now, how many of them will seem pathetic in comparison? But I suppose there's there's no way to truly understand that. Because at the end of the day, you can always take the scale to some other country where where people are going through some level of inhumane suffering, right? Simple truth is that you were hurting, and you know that that's enough for it to be valid, so to speak. But still, there were problems I wish I still had. Because they were better problems to have. And I guess that also, you know, this whole conversation about transitional states, you know, it doesn't just apply to time. You can also see it, um, well, I guess this also has to do with time, but you know, the day itself, right? Let's talk a little bit about elves. I had these books. They're called the The Fabled Lands series. I think I have the first three volumes or something like that, or the first two volumes, and then just one random volume from the series. And, you know, these are books that I think they were released in the 90s or 80s, and they're just these gorgeous books with amazing art in them, and they're they're like this these big flat tones with great images, and you know, they have like stories from a bunch of mythologies, and I think the first book of them that I read was about elves and and fairies, and one of the one of the themes that you have with the elf and the fairy stories is that the time in which elves and fairies are present are in are in a time in times that are ephemeral by nature, times that are ambiguous, that lie between two times. So you would never see an elf appear during daytime or nighttime, but dawn and dusk were completely different questions. It was in the melding and the merging of two worlds, in that split second where those two worlds would collide, would kiss. It was only then that you could see the elves. And on a mythological level, well, right there you can see, you can see the fundamental connection that exists with our fascination, with stages of transition, with with limital periods of of our life, with uh you know, with with dichotomies that that meld and become some strange zone between. There's something alluring about it. However, again, fundamentally what makes it alluring, I suppose, is the idea that there is a choice there. Choice there that could matter, if taken. But again, if the choice is never taken, then it is it is for naught. Your your efforts were for not, right? I often have this fantasy of just running away and abandoning everything. And I suppose that in recent times this has been a very common tendency even with uh with my own writing, with with my protagonist. Yet as tempting as that thought is, as tempting as that thought to end venture into the the space of of liminality and and not have some some life path charted out for me, in in light of that, I I guess I just I have to you know there there's the reality that there are choices and it is always alluring to be presented with choices in your life, right? It feels good to have options. It always does. We never like it when options are taken from us. But the options themselves are only valuable if at one point you choose one of them, because if you never choose any of them, then you're just navel gazing or something like that, and you're you're not accomplishing anything. You're beating the purpose of being granted so many options. Because fundamentally, you're granted the options so that you can do or choose the best one. But again, this this comes back to a question or worldview. What is the best option out of any? Well, these are things that can only be determined through your goals. And what are your goals determined from? They're determined from value judgments. And where do value judgments come from? They come from your values, your thoughts, your fundamental beliefs. And you know, I would argue that this is a question that we need to endeavor to ask. I think it will be impossible to answer this question without God. But if even if you don't believe in him, this is a question you should answer. I think you'll have a hard time of it trying to answer it without God, and it will prove nigh impossible, but you cannot escape the fact of answering it. In fact, your life will be much better by at least attempting to find an answer. And really I'm you know, I'm saying all this as I'm about to go to sleep, taking sleep early. Recently I've I've just I've come to appreciate more and more the the peace that I feel when heading to sleep. When I was a young boy, sleep always scared me. I think for a time I had sleep paralysis and I wasn't able to sleep well and I I didn't sleep alone until a very late age. I I think I I was like twelve or or thirteen or something. And then what happened? What happened then after that I still did not look forward to sleeping when I entered my teenage years or or my young adulthood, because I started associating sleep with eight hours of a day that were that were wasted, that only served to fast forward my life to whenever my death will occur. And that they fast forward my life without really giving me much in in terms of content, dreams not with pan notwithstanding. But I think now I I just I look forward to them. I look forward to them because it it's a world that feels like the walls are closing around me. And not necessarily for a bad cause. The thing in particular I have on my mind is actually a very good cause, but it is closing me nonetheless, and that's just the reality of making choices and you know trying to become some sort of pillar in the community. It's that you know you have to set the tone and and choose. And you know, I think I'm rambling now, so I'll really leave it there. Oh, no, no, wait, one more thing. Okay. So the thing about dreams, right, is that in a world where it feels like the person I'm becoming, the person I am is is becoming more more solidified, more concretized, then I feel that in attempting to dream, or in having dreams, or falling asleep, it is a place where I can let go of those things, and again assume a level of carefully carefully delight that perhaps I did not have before. But those are my thoughts. Rider Wander Levin.