Change. Transition. Liminality.

Words that can strike fear in the heart of many people. The idea of change alone can bring physical reactions: sweating, dry mouth, fidgeting. There are also psychological responses — anxiety, depression, despair. For some, this liminal space feels life-threatening. For others, it is exhilarating.

Why do some people fear it while others welcome it?
What do we teach our children that shapes these reactions?
How do we learn to move through it?

I don’t have answers, but I’ve found a few observations that continue to stay with me.

In architecture, liminal space refers to areas designed for transition — corridors, stairwells, thresholds. Not destinations, but movement. For humans, this translates easily: change, and the journey through it.

We speak often about endings, outcomes, destinations. Even when we say “it’s about the journey, not the destination,” we still seem uneasy inside the movement itself. Why does that in-between space create so much anxiety?

If we are liminal beings, are we being taught to focus on an end that never quite arrives — or only exists for a moment? What if holding too tightly to outcomes costs us, physically and mentally? What if we are meant to occupy this space more fully?

Some familiar patterns suggest the risk of clinging too hard to stability. Routines, for example. I have a morning routine — yoga, meditation, journaling — and I value it deeply. Recently, I broke it. I went outside. Changed the movements. Meditated in nature. The difference was immediate. A breath of fresh air.

The routine wasn’t toxic. It had simply become static.

The same can be seen with keepsakes and mementos. Not harmful in themselves, but easily over-accumulated. Attachment quietly shifts from memory to identity. There’s a reason minimal living resonates with so many people.

Then there is addiction — attachment to an end state. A feeling. A release. Chocolate, for me, is a mild example: the taste, the sugar rush, the momentary pleasure. Taken too far, even small comforts begin to narrow us. In more serious forms — substance abuse, dependency — the fixation on an outcome traps us in place.

Stuck in between

I recently watched a video by Sean Tucker titled Stuck Between the Old & the New. In it, he speaks about anxiety and transition, and one line stayed with me:

“These emotions are signposts on the journey.”

Instead of digging into anxiety, he suggests we might look at where it is pointing. I recognised this immediately. So often I’ve looped inside a problem, only to find clarity once I spoke it aloud — once I looked up.

He also mentions the idea that we only grow in liminal space. It’s something we often agree with in theory, but struggle to live out. In these moments, our perspective narrows. We miss what is sitting plainly in front of us.

Light and shadow — monk

Around the same time, I began reading Yoshihiro Imai’s monk: Light and Shadow on the Philosopher’s Path. It’s a chef’s monograph, but also a meditation on process and impermanence.

Each morning, Imai gathers ingredients for that day’s menu — from the mountains, the markets, the wild edges. He speaks about how this menu, these people, this day will never happen again. The restaurant becomes a kind of theatre: kitchen, staff, guests — a performance that exists once, and then disappears.

He describes watching food move from light to shadow. From raw to prepared. From one state to another. The transitions are where meaning lives.

I’ve felt this while gardening — preparing soil, tending growth, responding to weather and pests. Watching seasons move. Eventually sharing that food with my family. Nothing static. Everything changing.

Embracing the liminal

Do we need to learn how to stay with the journey longer? To allow things to emerge slowly, and to notice the signposts as they appear?

Change is inevitable. Liminality is constant. We will always encounter uncertainty, loss, and transition. When we resist these spaces, we narrow ourselves. When we allow them, growth becomes possible.

Facing fear — stepping toward the edge, into light or shadow — asks something of us. Standing at the top of a cliff can be daunting. But the effort it takes to arrive there, to look out and know you moved through that fear, carries its own reward.

Recently, I’ve noticed that gripping too tightly to certainty creates blind spots — to opportunity, to learning, to growth. We need to live in liminal space, but not cling to it either. Left too long, even transition becomes fixed.

Below is a poem that helped me hold this more gently. A reminder that being lost is not failure — just a moment of re-orientation.