Limbo Bimbo
NB feels like she's between decisions, I feel like I'm between chunks of life. I've arrived safely in Limbo and that'll be my postal address for the coming weeks. I'd like to introduce you to Limbo. Its a dodgy place, at best; but it deserves an introduction and it deserves an introduction from someone who knows their way around the place. No, you're wrong. That someone isn't me. I only stumble, fall, scrape and bruise when passing through Limbo. But I'm beginning to find my way around it- or so I'd like to think. Humour me. Here's a brief guide to Surviving the Space Between the Parts of Your Whole, ie: Limbo.
First of all, what is Limbo? Limbo is that place that comes bang before a big change. You're neither ringing out the old nor quite ringing in the new, you're just beginning to get used to all the ringing you're going to have to do. It's disorientating, and that's the understatement of the day. It's that time, that place, where you know change is about to happen, but your brain is still in that relatively happy place where comprehending the change completely is slightly beyond the capacity of its imagination. So it's a slightly blurry place, things seem to 'just' happen without their being affected by the illusion of your control. Know the feeling yet?
Limbo is an odd place to be in. How it treats you depends upon how you treat being there. It's a little nasty in the beginning. I mean, imagine it if you will, you know life is about to turn itself at slightly awry angles and things are about to be different- but the degrees of the awry angles and difference are still lost to you. How different will things be? How upside down can life get? That's the tricky bit. It is terribly difficult to predict. You could rely on your imagination (for the likes of me, even slim wisdom gained from past experience) but its a difficult deal- not because the breadth of one's imagination doesn't suffice, it's simpler than that- the imagination, my imagination, just doesn't think of all the unplesant things that could come with change. So limbo often ends up being a ridiculously content time where one imagines the coming of Utopia with change. That, 9 times out of 9.1, doesn't happen.
Limbo is a place populated by decisions. Well, there's a lot of indecision hiding in the shadows of Limbo as well, but in the light of things, Limbo is full of decisions and choices that must be made. From the sorting of things, of the debris of life that we collect as we go along to the wasted emotional baggage that we could do without, choices must be made about keeping and discarding. Choices are to be made about the worth of things and their value in our lives. So I suppose change is good in that way, it helps you get rid of the stuff you don't need any more.
Limbo is bittersweet too. Not only things, people are also left behind through change. Somewhere through Limbo it becomes painfully apparent that the comfort of old friendships and old loves must be lost. A new set of people must be understood, efforts made again, ties tied again. Limbo is that place where the loss of the old and the uneasy excitement of the new mingle with each other.
Perhaps the greatest element of Limbo is its instability. The solid predictability of things is suddenly gone- and for me this is perhaps the most unpleasant part. It is perhaps why its so hard to imagine the quantum of change that will hit us. Neither are we in the new yet, nor have we left the old. It's just a strange, uncomfortable place in the crevice between the two. The newness of change is wonderful for some, horrid for others. I suppose its just the way we choose to deal with it.
It is full of fear and joy, decision and indecision, the light of excitement and the shadows of anxiety. It's just a giant periodic oxymoron. And I suppose we all go through it. Everyone faces change once in a while, right? I'm hardly alone. I guess we all just deal with it differently. Some choose to block it, others embrace it, some fear it and others revel in its choices, some are silent about it and others philosophize cryptically on their blog.
This entry was posted
on 6.6.06 at 9:43 PM.
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Loved the post .. can understand your state da .. was in the same position at the beginning of the orientation ... In the limbo period one anticipates a lot and builds up a set of expectations .. lemme tell you that personally MICA has lived up to most of my parameters in this set .. enjoy this phase ...
1 comment? That's all this blog got?? In the words of Aamir khan from Rangeela (yet again)..." I shocked" :) ....and yes yes, that is how vela I am right now.Sipping some frooti, bag of chips on the side, and going leaf by leaf through your precious manifesto. Can't really read a novel in office now, can I? :)
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