When I walk through a doorway I try to notice it.
I don’t do it all the time, but when I do, I pause before the threshold, take a breath and walk through.
I am in a new room.
I am ready to go to bed. I look at the doorway. On the other side is the haven of my bedroom, a special place for Sarah and I alone. I take a breath and walk through that doorway. It’s time to rest.
I am starting my day of work. I stand outside the doorway to my office. I look inwards. In this room, I write, create and work. I take a breath and walk through. It’s time to work.
I’d love to tell you I do this with every doorway I walk through. I don’t, but when I do, I enjoy noticing the shift and taking a mindful moment to consciously engage with my life.
The front door is a brilliant doorway. On the inside, you put your shoes and coat on and then you step through it into the big wide world. You go from inside, to outside.
On the outside, you’re cold, tired and a bit hungry. You rustle for your keys inside your pockets and look at your door. Take a breath, cross the threshold. You are inside. Safety.
I’m becoming increasingly conscious of doorways and thresholds. I’ve always loved being on trains or planes. Thinking deeper about it, with a more spiritual lens, of course. They are a very particular type of doorway, more like a passage, they take you somewhere totally new. Whilst you are on a plane or a train - where are you exactly? In a sense, you are nowhere. You are in the in-between world travelling from one place to another. You have left one world, stepped through one threshold and you are travelling towards another one.
When I was in Scotland at the end of last year, I became intrigued by bus stops and train platforms too. Places where you wait. That’s all you do there, you wait. Simple. Quite funny really in today’s world. These are places where you have to be still and trust that you’ll get picked up. There are many metaphors in that. I notice I often find it hard to relax there, I find it hard to wait.
I believe we make life very hard for ourselves nowadays because we don’t acknowledge thresholds in our lives. In times when people were more in touch with spirit and religion, the religious calendar acted as a drumbeat to life and gave people’s progression meaning and understanding. Think of Bar Mitzvah’s, Communion, Marriage and other religious sacraments or rituals. These rites of passages mark the crossing of thresholds in our lives. They supported our growth, showing us the way.
Nowadays we are devoid of these rites of passage. We have to contend with the thresholds we cross on our own. Boy to man. Girl to woman. Child to parent. Becoming a Husband, Wife, Mother, Father, Carer. Death, birth etc. We lack the support to help us navigate these moments in our life.
In much of the coaching I’ve received I’ve been paying for help to cross thresholds. Leaving roles, grieving relationships and moving cities. These are times of change. I’ve crossed many thresholds in my life, we all do, yet only recently have I consciously seen these moments as corridors into something new.
As many of my friends become Mothers I see them crossing threshold after threshold. The threshold of birth is one that literally must be pushed through with incredible might and courage. Then they must travel through the corridor of becoming a mother whilst caring for a newborn baby. Then after a year or so, usually with sadness, they step over the boundary of going back to work or taking the child to nursery. Many thresholds, not always conscious, always felt and rarely actively supported.
In day to day life, when you walk through doorways you can always go back. In and out of the study, nip to the bathroom, pop to the kitchen, hang the clean laundry in the bedroom. Day to day life is fluid. Yet in Life, when we walk through doorways. We can’t go back. The door closes, the passage disappears. Once you become a Father, you cannot un-become one. Once a parent has died, you cannot get them back. You can get a divorce, but rather than going back in time you’re just walking across a bridge into another chapter of you.
If I drew a line on my floor; on the side I am standing I am this version of me and on the other side of the line I am the new version of me. I would want to cross it, but I’d be nervous. I might wiggle my foot over the line. I might look back at all the memories I have of being this version of me now. I might look ahead and try to predict what’s in store for me on the other side.
There’s loss and sadness that comes with crossing a threshold. I always become quite moody on the last day of a holiday, because I’m sad to be leaving. When you get married, we don’t like to talk about it, but there’s sadness at leaving your life as a ‘single person’ behind (A well ran Stag Do is a brilliant rite of passage to help a man cross the threshold into marriage). It’s completely normal to be sad when you are about to change.
There’s fear too. Fear at what it might be like to become a Father, Mother, Husband or Leader. It’s hard to negate that fear, because you can’t just peak across the threshold to see what it might be like. This is why support from a community, mentor, guide or coach is very important in helping us cross these thresholds. As well as traditional rites that support the crossing.
And now, I’ll take a breath. Blow out my candle. Close down my writing app. When I write; I cross a threshold into another world. A cocoon that is just me, a keyboard and a screen. My temple.
Now it’s time to cross the threshold back to the real world.
This is a doorway I can step in and out of.
Cheers,
James x
p.s Founders, I have 2 more slots for Founder Coaching available.
p.p.s #267* full story is some of my favourite writing ever.
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Beautiful metaphor. And very well explained planes and trains, totally resonates with me:)