Life Is a Series of Stopovers

The "Hanged Man" of Tarot

"The Hanged Man" in my Rider-Waite Tarot Card set. He is experiencing a stopover. He's in a state of liminality. It's a good place to be.

When Rob and I flew from Perth, Western Australia, to Nice in France seven years ago we spent several hours on a stopover in Dubai.

Stopovers are strange places.

Of course there are shops, bathroom and shower facilities, food outlets, lounges, viewing windows, scattered couches and sleeping pods to make the stopover pleasant. But it’s hard to relax because one is in an in-between place.

You can’t unpack and change into a more comfortable pair of shoes because your suitcase is on the tarmac being loaded onto your next plane. You dare not fall asleep in case you miss your flight call. The constant checking that you haven’t mislaid your boarding pass, purse or passport turn you into an over-wound toy and you hesitate to consume too many beverages because you hate the hiss-and-suck sounds of tiny in-flight toilets you’d be forced to use should you indulge on this stopover.

A stopover is a form of purgatory. It’s neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. It’s a space where nothing meaningful can be done. A place of mild but constant torment. Although you’re dying to, you can’t get on with what you think of as the rest of your life.

You’ve left your old, stable, well-functioning life behind and haven’t arrived in the exciting new life where you plan to stay and do great things until your holiday money runs out.

You’re here, stuck in a stopover, and you long to be there, where your real life will begin again.

However, I don’t need to go on an overseas trip to be caught in a stopover, to experience a state of liminality, a feeling of being betwixt and between, neither here nor there.

The word liminality comes from the Latin limen, which means threshold. A threshold is the space a doorway creates. When you stand on a threshold, you’re neither in the room nor out of it. You’re in-between.

Human life is a series of being betwixt and between – caught in a figurative stopover between not having certain skills and then acquiring them; the distance between being in one place and not yet being in the place one wants to be; the time between the experience one is having now and having the experience one hopes to be having as soon as possible.

I can experience liminality walking between the car park and the shop entrance; between phoning a government department and finally connecting to a human on the other end; between buying a vanilla slice and sinking my teeth into it.

There’s nothing wrong with being in a state of liminality. It’s the impatience, annoyance and frustration one brings to it that makes it unbearable.

The Hanged Man

The "Hanged Man" in the Rider-Waite Tarot card set pictured above seems to have accepted his current experience of being betwixt and between, neither one thing nor the other.

We’ve all experienced liminality, stopovers, feelings of being betwixt and between, neither one thing nor the other.

We were once babies who stayed where we were put. Then there were several weeks when we were stuck between staying where we were put and learning certain techniques to enable us to move ourselves in whatever direction we chose. Later in life we may take up an apprenticeship, but we’re not yet fully qualified in that field. We’re almost there but not quite. Or we’re hovering betwixt being an oldish sort of young person and a youngish sort of old person, or an oldish older person and an old, old one.

Learning curves, career plateaux, breakdowns and breakthroughs. These are all common stopovers, temporary spaces where acceptance, patience, tolerance and taking deep, relaxed breaths can make a world of difference to how you feel.

No matter what sort they are, stopovers don’t last forever. Sometime soon we’ll hear a voice announce our flight number, or a flashing insight may enable us to move forward, or perhaps creative persistence will lead to another level of accomplishment.

The land of liminality is a good place to be.

Be like "The Hanged Man".

Enjoy the stopovers life brings.

With love, Marlane