You’ll hear about it in the places, spaces, and crossed-off traces of where people are and once were. This is the in-between. The in-between isn’t anything you can find on a road map; you’ll hear it in stories, passing words, the lyrics right before the chorus, and in silence. Some people walk right through it without ever realizing the flower petals they’re stepping on. Others notice how the key has changed. Or maybe you used to be a kid, falling asleep in the pews of the dark stone church your grandma used to go to, but now you’re making bread at some bakery you hadn’t had the thought to glance at until you started working there. 

“How did I even get here?” you ask yourself. 

Grab a map and place down a dot where you are right now and the spot where you want to go, then use a red marker to draw the snaking path of roads that connect the two points. 

As you point to the red squiggle, do you think of it as a place? What if you were to add an infinite amount of dots along that red path? The journey is a destination. 

I’m here and there and someplace else. But somehow, I’m still scared of seeing the other parts of it. I’m afraid of changing my mind because it means acknowledging how nothing is everlasting, and I must leave the one thing I fall asleep next to.  

Being human is impermanence. We didn’t always realize this growing up. We’ve had phases of liking rock and roll or jellyfish or building dreamcatchers and interestingly, it didn’t always feel like a phase to us. The intensity of phases makes us live it rather than pass right through it. 

Children can ride the wave of the in-between like it’s the world because it is the world. Children want to know it, want to see it, want to be it, and because of all that, they’re able to be present now.

Children can see the place that they are, not as a step towards adulthood, but simply as the place they are now. You will grow out of your shoes and start to learn your fractions and still be here, able to see what you can through your kid’s eyes. 

Having a glitchy internet connection is somehow worse than having no internet at all. Being lost isn’t about being on the wrong path, but the possibility of it. That’s why it’s so scary to be here: what if here is not the right place? What if I had to inch deeper into the between? And the uncertainty of it all? 

There’s chaos to transition, something remarkably unpredictable that will lead you astray in a way that you never would’ve found had you been looking. 

What I’m learning is that being between one thing and the next isn’t so bad even though all of it can feel so scary sometimes. It is impossible or exhausting to focus on the future while being in the moment, so you have to take the time to process each of it. 

It is important to not ignore the before or the after; to be present for it all.  

I’m still learning to live in impermanence.