Suspended Between Things

That strange, liminal "dead week" between Christmas and New Year...

There is a place between where you were and where you are going.

Sometimes, it is the hardest place to be.

Too often, it takes something forced upon us to be present: hospital visits, pandemics… Christmas.

And yet, once our usual routine is ruptured, we find we like being forced into this curious space between past and future: the present. We find, even, that we have a greater capacity for it than we realized.

That’s why I love strange, liminal “dead week” between Christmas and New Year.

It reminds me that the best of me is not what I can do, or what I yearn for, or what I might be. It is rather that which I’ve worked hardest for — and that is, to be present within my life.

There is a pull in this period, a gravity that draws you towards the future; often before you’ve even put the past in place or allowed the weight of this moment, right now, to anchor you.

Yes, a little dream or imagining might flutter in.

But there is also a time to re-negotiate with that compulsive social force-field we are all, too often, helplessly tethered to. It is the one that makes you live in a yearning for things that are, as of yet, not yet.

And, living in these as-of-not-yet things, we cannot help but design our days around their potential creation.

If I do that, then this will happen, and I will get that!

It makes life a mirage.

Because here’s the thing:

The busier you are, the quicker your life passes.

I know this as a recovering serial do-er.

We want to live with “hope.”

And yet hope thrusts your mind ever forward towards something out there, beyond here—rather than having the courage to live more deeply in this moment.

Leonard Cohen said that there is a crack in everything, and that is where the light gets in.

The crack, though, is your life.

Imperfect, soaring, hurting, yearning, aspiring, dreaming, temporary, defiant, sometimes-breaking, sometimes really living.

I love this period because it breaks up the pattern.

It reminds me of what I know, yet sometimes have to be forcibly reminded of:

That real living is when I feel expanded within time.

When things are suspended, and I have the courage to be within my own life—redolent with its flaws, supremely lined with stars, negotiating of pit-holes, so often nearly-where-I-want-it, and too often forgetful of its own majesty.

I’m grateful for everything. For each kiss, each fall, each song, each blunder, each failure, each triumph, each yearning.

That is my composition. That is my tapestry. That is my story.

Today, I am grateful to be suspended between things.
To witness it all.
And by doing so, to be richer in my participation of it.

Yes, the future will come, and yes, I will throw myself into my yearning and into its creation.

But for now, this little fleck of stardust is thankful.

And will dare to live a few days yet, suspended between things—the only place we ever, really, live.