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Am I like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?

What does it mean to be uncommitted? Is it bad? Unwise? Indecisive? Or, perhaps more kindly, is it merely vacillation: taking time to investigate the options more thoroughly before choosing? Recognizing that differences may well be important; that there is a reason that choices exist.

Knowing that there is almost always a choice -a space between options- can be helpful; we are made of spaces, but in retirement they seem more serious; the often unoccupied transition between the previous purpose and meaning of the work we used to perform, contrast with the looming abyss of unused time: the emptiness of being lost midway along a detour even though signs warned that it was coming up. Not knowing its direction is more than merely serious: it is an uncharted emptiness, an interregnum, a space that begs to be shortened. I wrote an essay about spaces a few years ago[i] although they were admittedly areas of a different kind. In them, the spaces were not meant to evolve, so much as to offer a refuge and encourage curiosity. But, whether spaces are interposed between objects, or are gaps in Time, they are nonetheless unoccupied.

I suppose I am two people in this type of emptiness, but in it, I wonder if I remain truly me anymore. I am neither who I was, nor do I fully realize the person I may become; who and where I am is unpinned; I no longer exist in the past nor have I reached the future. Not yet…

I am, I suppose, Nepantla -an indigenous term from central America describing a person interposed between important things who is neither this nor that. It is to be liminal: a person in transition and existing between things and between identities; a me hardly recognizable even to myself, because I am no longer myself…I cannot commit to an unshakable identity.

I have difficulty even recognizing the old paradigm where I once lived; it has moved away from me and I am alone; the substitute teacher has not yet arrived. I do not like the space where I am confined; and yet, although I long for liberation, I am agoraphobic now. At least I am here, and not  wandering lost somewhere else which I might not recognize either…

How long does a boundary last -is it temporary like the transition in a chrysalis for a butterfly? Will I be improved if and when I emerge? Made beautiful? Or am I forever trapped inside a pupal casing: a pharate unable to escape? Perhaps, in my confusion, I failed to grasp the potential and will be forever punished for hesitating: lingering too long between the old ways and the new, in the middle of conflicting sets of obligations, indeterminate as to my new identity, and still wondering why.

I am a Sisyphus liberated without instructions, and wondering why he felt a need to reach the crest of the hill even without the boulder he assumed would be part of the job.

Nepantla is ‘the in between of temporalities, worlds, processes, paradigm shifts’[ii] It is the space between things, the neither/nor of existing without choosing, the time ‘in-between a past that is no longer available and a strange and uncertain future that seems always, and permanently, out of reach.’ And yet, I do reach for it, groping without a clear idea of where it is, but groping nevertheless.

‘Nepantla is neutrality, a letting-go, or a standing on the margins, observing the unfolding of the world, history, and life without making a firm commitment. This could be due to a choice we’ve made regarding demands upon us or to the fact that, somehow, our power has been stripped from us, making us spectators or non-participants. Yet, in affirming my neutrality, I regain power over circumstances that may demand my attention or action – I say yes and no because I am still Nepantla… liminal.’

And since I retired I am also Nepantla and adrift; there is no harbour in sight, and the currents want to play with me as if it was my fault. Where is the power in vacillation I wasn’t allowed when I was a work? Have I done it wrong; made a mistake? I mean I had to retire; I couldn’t work effectively forever.

I feel like Shakespeare’s Macbeth: ‘My way of life is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf, and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have, but, in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not…’

Well, I suppose it’s not really quite that bad, but being aimless is nonetheless distressing. At work, there was always a direction, always a purpose; people depended on me, on my knowledge, on my willingness to help them. I’m still willing to help them, of course but they no longer ask; I am no longer in the proper chair, I am not dressed for the part; and I don’t look like I could still solve their problems were they brave enough to seek my advice. But perhaps they’re now wiser than me; perhaps they aren’t required to follow me into Nepantla.

I am already slinking out of the past I think… but where is the border of the new regime for the new me? Am I supposed to be able to reach what I cannot even see yet? How long am I supposed to pretend I am still in Nepantla? To paraphrase Yeats, ‘Surely some revelation is at hand…and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards the future to be born?’

Perhaps Nepantla is actually just a waiting room however, and I’ll be called whenever a job, or something else for which I am qualified, becomes available. I can only hope…

[i] https://musingsonwomenshealth.com/2022/01/19/a-sorry-sight/

[ii] https://psyche.co/ideas/why-we-should-embrace-nepantla-the-in-betweenness-of-life

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