Thresholds
Reflecting on thresholds which aren't crossed but inhabited
January takes its name from Janus, the ancient figure who stood at the threshold - at the doorway of the old and new year - facing both what has been and what has not yet arrived.
In modern times we speak of thresholds as gateways, moments of decision, as places we pass through on our way to somewhere else. The emphasis is almost always on movement: before and after, arrival and departure, old life and new.
Over time a threshold has come to be understood and imagined as something which we cross; a line we traverse into a different space. A taking off point.
But what if a threshold is not a taking off point, but a necessary vantage point at which it’s important to stop, to look, to take stock, to wait, to be? In any case not all thresholds are crossed. Some thresholds, for an unspecified period of time, have to be lived in out of necessity rather than choice, when crossing it is neither possible nor asked of us. When this happens, we must inhabit the threshold.
Grief brings us to this kind of threshold. So do other experiences which strip life back to its bare essentials: profound loss, irreversible change, events which can neither be undone nor explained away. These aren’t moments we step through and leave behind. They’re places we find ourselves standing in often for far longer than either we want to or expect.
A threshold held in this way isn’t a pause before progress. It’s not a failure to move on. It’s a condition of being, one in which the familiar structures of time, meaning and expectation no longer operate as they once did.
In these places action is limited. Explanation falters. The urge to ‘do something’ meets the reality that nothing available will change what has already happened. We’re left not with answers, but with the heaviness of a reality that can frighten and overwhelm.
This is deeply uncomfortable in a culture which values momentum above all else. We’re trained to believe that movement is always preferable to stillness, that progress is a moral good, and that waiting is a sign of passivity or weakness. Thresholds which don’t resolve themselves quickly can feel threatening, both to those who inhabit them and to those who stand nearby.
Yet some thresholds can’t be hurried. They ask us to stay put. Here. Now.
Inhabiting a threshold doesn’t mean approving of what has occurred. It’s not about acceptance in the sense of agreement or reconciliation. Being in a threshold isn’t about passive acquiescence. It simply means recognising that we’re in an in-between state where the old shape of life has gone and the new one hasn’t yet emerged. We wait.
Grief is one of the clearest examples of this threshold. After loss, many people discover that they’re no longer who they were before but aren’t yet able to imagine who they’re becoming, who they might choose to become. The future feels a very distant country (sometimes its existence is doubted). The past feels leaden, opaque, blocking the way into deeper happier memory. The present feels utterly constricting.
In such a place, what is required of us is waiting. Not passive waiting, and not waiting for answers, but waiting for inner changes that cannot be directed or hurried. Something begins to loosen and re-form beneath awareness, outside intention or control. We don’t make this happen. We remain on/in the threshold long enough for it to take place.
Inhabiting a threshold asks for a different understanding of strength which is more akin to endurance than ‘staying strong’, as grievers are often and unhelpfully encouraged to be. This state asks for honesty in place of optimism, and patience rather than visible progress. Above all it resists the demand to perform grief recovery to someone else’s timetable.
Thresholds of this kind have always existed. Ancient cultures marked them carefully, recognising that there are seasons in which nothing can be forced, only endured. They understood that darkness and light are elements belonging together in the making of a life.
To hold, to be, in a threshold is to live with uncertainty without rushing to resolve it. It’s to allow time to behave differently, no longer in its familiar linear pattern, but in slower, more cyclical ways. It’s also to recognise that some questions remain unanswered, and that the persistent pursuit of ‘Why?’ ultimately leads nowhere. Within this threshold, we come to understand that some losses don’t pass through us but permanently reshape us.
Not every threshold leads to clarity. Not every crossing brings relief. Not every waiting period ends with illumination. But holding the threshold, remaining within it, still matters.
To live in a threshold is also to find out that life quietly reshapes itself. What once mattered may loosen its grip. What once seemed essential may fall away. This shift isn’t the consequence of deliberate reflection and planning but the slow, deep consequence of having been changed irrevocably.
Many people also notice, over time, that their social world subtly rearranges itself. Old friendships may thin or fall away, not through failure or fault, but because the ground has shifted. At the same time, new relationships emerge as companions who can meet us where we stand now.
To remain in/on a threshold carries a cost. It’s tiring, often lonely work. It asks us to tolerate uncertainty, to endure the absence of resolution, and to resist the pressure, often from others and from ourselves, to move on, to make sense, to recover, and of course, to demonstrate strength.
Those who grieve are frequently urged to be strong, to look ahead, to return to themselves as they once were. But thresholds of this kind don't respond to effort or instruction. They can't be crossed simply by force of will, or exited through insight.
Inhabiting a threshold also entails relinquishing all vigilance regarding ‘the next step’. We can’t see that far. We’ve not been gifted with this…yet. There’s only the place where we find ourselves standing. As Martin Luther once said, “Here I stand; I can do no other”.
Thresholds don’t announce themselves and they don’t resolve on a whim or by intention. They ask something quieter and deeper of us: to stand as and where we are without pretence. To live without answers for longer than feels reasonable. To let the shape of our life alter without rushing to explain it to anyone. To wait for a different sense of self to begin forming within us without knowing in advance what that self will be.
The waiting is all.