Photo: By Greg Rakozy via Unsplash
It was December and the first time visiting San Francisco in years. I was flown out for a job interview and put up in a modern hotel near the ferry building.
I was in the middle of a torrential love affair with Manhattan and didn’t care to leave the east coast, but figured it would be favorable to get the hell out for a couple of days.
Menlo Park is the part of Silicon Valley known for its large concentration of venture capital firms. It was pouring rain that day. The car pulled up to a cookie cutter building and I ducked out, running into an office where I’d be peppered with questions for the next hour.
I waited in an enormous conference room at a long, polished table with high-backed leather chairs. There was an entire wall made up of flat screen televisions. On the wall facing me were three clocks in a row – Singapore, Beijing, Silicon Valley.
The clocks were old school analog. I watched the second hand tick then shudder to a stop. Tick, shudder, stop. My favorite part was the shudder right before the stop.
After the interview I ran back outside and jumped into another Uber. It was still raining but now it was dark. I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes.
In that minute, I was done.
It was winter back in New York. Two weeks ago I moved from Williamsburg to Soho. It was a lot of change but the real transition was yet to come.
It would be thirty minutes until we reached the city. I called my parents to kill the time. They were riled up, excited to hear all about the interview. Candy coated versions of stories told third person.
Shamans use a term called “liminality” to define the phase of moving from one state of being to the next. In classic shaman tradition one experiences profound transformation this way.
How I see it, we use liminality as a vehicle – one that transports us from one version of reality to another.
Back in New York, I was enjoying the present a little too much.
I was spending beyond my means, going out every night and buying things I couldn’t afford. I’d eat at all the restaurants and buy the trendy clothes.
I met handsome, brilliant yet nefarious men and took my therapist’s advice that perhaps this phase of my life was indeed intended for falling out of cabs.
I didn’t take ownership of my life.
It was like the Soho apartment wasn’t even real – it accommodated a very temporary and extremely particular phase of hang time. Somehow then, it didn’t count.
Every evening I’d pour myself a double whiskey and put on a Smiths record.
And wait.
Tick, shudder, stop.
Why do they say “the best is yet to come” when the present is all we have?
Restlessness is driven by things like unhappiness, worry, or blind ambition.
For me, the sum.
And when opportunities did arise, I’d completely freak out because I wasn’t ready to take my life to the next level.
The only way to get there was to invest inwardly. To build myself back up. To become battle ready.
Like an off-duty soldier in training, waiting for the inevitable day to be called back into battle.
Instead, I was waiting for the liminal state to be over. It would’ve been way more productive to get it on my side.
And finally, I did.
Cut to ten months later. I sit in a bright apartment on the opposite coast, laptop open with a jazz record playing in the background. It’s been four months since I’ve last touched alcohol. I’ve been heads down in work, on my passion projects and on myself.
If the time comes, I will be ready. In my mind, there is no other moment but now.
Sometimes we need to be thrown down hard to bounce back higher than ever. To embrace that weird hang time and use it to our advantage.
It’s the small tweak necessary to hold still, even for a moment, and savor what life has given us. We are them – the most beautiful moments, too precious and few.
Maybe that’s worth getting the hell out for.