Beauty and Terror

“Let everything happen to you
 Beauty and terror
 Just keep going
 No feeling is final” 

Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m thinking about these words from Rilke as I navigate through this liminal space I’ve been in the last couple of years. I’ve been waylaid from the path I was on, uncertain where I’ll land next. One of those in-between places. The abyss between what I’ve left behind and where I’m moving towards. The confusion before the clarity. 

My instinctual reaction was to resist the change. I refused to relinquish control of how my life should unfold. I held onto outdated ideas and beliefs about what I should have achieved in my life by now and what I should accomplish next. I buried myself with work, noise and distractions. Anything to drown out my inner knowing, the quiet voice whispering in the undercurrent.

I played the role as if I had the script and knew my lines. And that's how I lost myself. 

My life was a performance of the person the world had told me to be. The more I resisted the change, the more I tried to force things to be a certain way, the longer I remained stuck and stagnant. I was holding myself captive to a narrative that felt like a mask. I had outgrown the role, the identity, the story I told myself—and nothing new came to replace them. Suddenly, the structures that once held me together faltered.

It can be hard to let go. We hold onto things longer than we should because letting go can feel like defeat. We follow outdated maps that lead to dead ends. We arrive, only to feel more lost than ever before. 

But what if the thing we perceive as failure isn’t something to avoid, but an opportunity to grow and expand?

Because, it turns out, getting sidetracked from the path I was on wasn’t evidence my life was falling apart. Or, that a crazy lady was living inside my head. I was redirected from a path that wasn’t meant for me. Unfolding into a new and unfamiliar way of being. It wasn’t what I thought I wanted, but it turned out to be everything I didn’t know I needed. 

The liminal space is daunting to navigate. It’s the great unknown. A transformative place where nothing is written, and everything is possible.  Rather than resist it, I decided to embrace it. We only get one chance at this life thing. There is no dress rehearsal, no do-overs. Though my ambition tells me I’m late or falling behind, I’ve come to realize there’s nowhere else to be but here.

We’re impatient and want to hurry through the lulls and detours and go straight to the Good Part—in stories, and in life. But maybe the diversion is the good part. Maybe, as Alan Watts put it, we miss the point the whole way along: to sing or to dance while the music was being played. Sometimes, all we can do is trust life to rearrange us in better ways. Surrender to the beauty and terror of it all. The rest, friend, is up to you. 

We think progress is linear. But growth, when you're doing it right, often feels chaotic.

You’re not falling apart. You’re emerging. 

You’re not failing. You’re becoming.