What Edge Are You Crossing?

I have been thinking about edges lately.

Lines we cross when we are ready.

Thresholds.

It’s usually easy to tell if we’re on one side of that threshold versus the other. In these moments, we are in a pre-contemplative or contemplative state around something. We haven’t yet decided to do it, to take that leap, or to take that action.

But we are considering it. 

And once we make that decision, it’s like a switch flips inside us, and there is no turning back.

Some edges we may choose to cross. But others, we are hurled over.

We cross an edge when someone important in our life passes away. When we start a new job. When we have kids. And when those kids leave home. 

What edges are you facing lately? Any that you are considering crossing, but just haven’t the guts yet to do it?

It could be as simple as contemplating joining a gym. Or taking on a new hobby. Or even bigger, leaving a relationship.

I crossed an edge when I had my son.

When I went to that first Al-Anon meeting.

When I lost my mother and father. 

When I was baptized as an adult. 

When I went on an online dating app!

When I bought my first home.

When I flew in a plane for the first time after COVID. 

And when I was laid off. 

Here’s the thing about edges—we sometimes have to make a bold move to cross one. As poet Rabindranath Tagore once said, “You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

Right?

We have to get in.

Put a toe in. Or a foot. Or just dive straight in.

Or start that big, long climb up the mountain that we know is a mountain but that we want to get to the other side of.

What mountain or edge is calling you forward? 

In these moments, sometimes, we have to take a leap of faith. I remember learning that there are many false peaks by climbing 4,000-footers in NH. You see a peak that you think is the top, but it’s really only the first peak, and there are others behind it. Or you can’t see the peak at all because you are in the thick woods, and you just have to trust and know that you will be on the other side soon.

Artist and calligrapher Margaret Shepard described these moments well when she said, “Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.”

Where do you need to take a leap of faith and make that jump?

On one side of the mountain is “here,” your current reality. On the other side is “there,” the place you don't know how it feels yet. So, these leaps ask us to be brave, to have courage.

To learn who you are on the other side.

I remember the weekend I moved out with my son, leaving his not-yet-recovered alcoholic father that a bunny showed up in the yard. It was around Easter, so the fact that a bunny showed up was not lost on my 5-year-old son.

Rabbits are symbols of spring and rebirth. 

It was a huge gift that this little bunny showed up, hopping around in the long grass in front of our barn.

But I knew even then that rabbits also represent the ability to move between two worlds. Their ability to live underground but also above ground shows they are creatures that can move between dimensions. 

In that moment, I remember being terrified—because I did not know what our future held. 

But I knew there was something waiting for us in life on the other side. 

Sometimes, in moments like that, we can dream our way over an edge. 

We can visualize life that is different and better.

And we before we know it, we take a giant bunny hop over to the other side.

Have a comment? Please share on social media or contact Kellie here.