(The story below comes from "Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes" by William Bridges)
His face and body are whitened with clay, and he is no longer recognizable as the youth who left his village two months before. The wounds of his ordeal are healed now, yet they will always bear witness to what he has suffered. They mark him as one who has crossed the boundary of childhood and has put that life behind him.
He is alone. More than simply out of contact with his peers and his elders, he is absolutely and radically alone. During this time (or time-out) in his life, he is out of relation with all others. There is no map to which one could point and say, "There he is." There is no there, because he inhabits for this time a nonplace.
He is beyond the mediating powers of roles and relationships and social mores. Armed only with the rituals and chants taught him by an initiation master, he wanders free and unattached through the universe. Beyond the meaning-making powers of his everyday realities, he stands face-to-face with existence.
Eventually, after he receives his vision, he will know the time has come to return to the village and take up the rights and responsibilities of his new status and his new identity. Marked by his scars and empowered by his new knowledge, he will rejoin the social order on a new basis. He is in a profound sense a new person.
Rite of Passage is a way of withdrawal and return. It is the way of forgetting and rediscovery. It is the way of ending and of beginning. In following it, the person crosses over from an old way of being to a new way of being and is renewed.
:: "What we call the beginning if often the end. And to make an end
:: is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
:: - T. S. Eliot
I had a friend once. We have known each other for a long time, and have gone through many experiences together - challenges, victories, mutual support, celebrations, tears, joys, deep and revealing conversations, arguments, moments of vulnerability and closeness, and probably everything in-between. This was all a long time ago. Perhaps it only feels like it, because when life is rich and full and a lot is happening, it is easy to lose the sense of days and months and years. The connection faded away, we see each other very little now, and all the beautiful moments of the past are but a memory right now.
It was hard to let go of those memories and realize that the connection changed and shifted form. It was hard, and took a long time, to realize that I have been in a phase of transition with this friend. Resistance is indeed futile, and whatever we had in the past, has now ended. While unfortunate and sad, it is also unavoidable, and - as the common wisdom goes - life goes on. The past is just that. Moving along the transition curve, leaving the ending behind, one slides into a dip called the "neutral zone." This is a place of uncertainty, where the end has ended, and the new beginning has not yet started. A seemingly unproductive time-out when we feel disconnected from people and things in the past and emotionally unconnected to the present. An uncomfortable place, for sure. Yet, also very necessary, for in that place of neither-here-
Eventually, there will be a phase of a new beginning, when the time is right, and the planted seeds are ready to bloom. This is when the connection between us will be redefined and will take a different form. And, yes, I am fully aware that "no connection" is also a form of a connection, and it might be the outcome.
Just like in the story above, the ancients knew of the importance of rituals, to signify the ending of a phase, and a beginning of a new one. Until I come up with a better idea, I am going to look at this email as a ritual, signifying the end of the "ending" phase. Off I go into the "neutral zone"... though I suspect I have been there for quite some time now...
A sunny week to you all, inside and out.
:: From The Four Corners
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