By: Sulwa Siraj
“Don’t stress yourself out.”
This is a tidbit of advice I’ve often heard, usually from well-meaning adults, trying to comfort me during this transformative, albeit confusing, phase of my life: the summer before my last year of high school.
Like many other rising seniors, I have the stress of college applications looming heavy over my head. There’s also the pressure of choosing what exactly it is I want to do with my life.
“Don’t stress yourself out,” they say.
But what does this phrase mean exactly? Am I not supposed to think about my future? To ignore the questions that keep surfacing, urging me to define who I am?
For me, to think and to stress are largely the same process; one does not occur without the other.
A comforting concept I’ve found amid the chaos of self-discovery has been that of “liminality.”
Anthropologist Victor Turner described liminality as the “betwixt and between” phase of a rite of passage, when someone has to let go of a former identity but has not yet fully stepped into a new one.
To be in a liminal phase of life means to be constantly confronted with the disillusionment and confusion associated with change.
It is to be aware that your former way of life is no longer sustainable and needs breaking down, but you are unsure of how to become whole again. It’s the in-between, where you’re no longer who you were, but not quite who you’ll become.
I think this beautifully captures the feeling of leaving high school and entering the adult world.
It’s easy to tell someone to “not stress,” but it’s harder to admit that this transition is naturally going to be uncomfortable.
The messiness, the uncertainty, and the questioning are all ingrained into this process of becoming, which is, I think, the essence of life.
Stress isn’t always a sign that something’s wrong.
Sometimes, it’s just a sign that something fundamental is just beginning.
Sulwa Siraj is an intern working for Texas Metro News through UNT’s Emerging Journalists Program.
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