Embracing the Liminality of Life To Optimize Setbacks
Change is a natural and continuous process of death and renewal.
Mary Shelley once wrote, “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.”
It speaks of Victor Frankenstein’s sudden shock when Elizabeth, his first love, dies on their wedding day, a victim of Victor’s creation going on a violent rampage. It sparks a series of events driven by guilt, rage and vengeance.
Shelley’s brilliant book Frankenstein, which many call the first science-fiction novel, speaks to the very real coping we through with major life changes. Conceptualizing and reconciling how these moments can transpire and how we’ll contend with them is no easy ask. The mere anticipation of them can induce anxiety and fear.
Yet you can benefit if you think about these moments from a perspective that embraces the fluidity of change.
These transitions are constant even if they seem abrupt
Psychologists have long referred to life’s continual change as liminality, the transition between two stages — often induced through major life events or rites of passage —…
