“Where am I?”, the man called out. The foggy grey space he appeared in did not answer. The cool feel of mist, alternating to light rain, swirled around him. He couldn’t figure out how he got here.
The last thing he remembered, he was sitting at his desk at work. After checking his list of items to attend to, his email, and his various websites for around the thousandth time, he sat there, staring at the walls around him. He was in between projects at the moment, or more aptly put, he didn’t have anything pressing and had little ambition to take on anything until it shoveled back to him. His work necessitated these ebbs and flows of action items, as coordinating with a dozen or more teams invariably left him with days where he was overloaded, and days where he was underloaded. Today was one of the latter.
But then it all changed, and he found himself in this space. A grey space, with no discernible start or stop. There was some light, but no visible light source. There was a breeze, accompanying the moisture, but no discernible hotness or coldness to it. With nothing concrete in terms of sensory input, he found it odd that below him, on the surface of the floor, street, rock, or whatever he was standing on, was a perfectly shaped circle, about 10 feet in diameter. He stood in the middle of it, its red outline visible despite the muted scenery.
He carefully walked closer to the edge of it, and reached down. Beyond the red line was solid, at least, so he abandoned his fear of falling if he walked beyond the ring. With great trepidation he stepped over the line. Suddenly the world around him changed. The rain became heavier, and colder. The wind picked up with an icy chill. It grew darker as well, the clouds seemingly bunched up as if crowding into an ethereal elevator. The man quickly took a step back. The climate began to return to its previous state.
Puzzled, he walked to the opposite side of the circle, and stepped out. Now the wind left completely, and the clouds began to part to show a gleaming white sun. The space became lighter, and hotter. This wasn’t exactly what the man wanted either, so he stepped back into the circle. The world returned to its middle ground.
And so the man found himself in the Inbetween state. He longed for it to change, but was unwilling to experience the extremities offered outside the red circle. However if he stayed in the circle, he would never experience anything more than the state he was in. The choice was his – venture beyond the safe confines, and learn how to cope with the hustle and bustle of the definite shift in realities, or stay put, safe but unfulfilled.
It was about this moment that he realized that he had a third option. He had merely stepped over the line, and backed into the circle as soon as things shifted. He turned to his right and stepped out of the line, and strode confidently away from the circle. The weather again shifted, however the extremes soon subsided. In moving into the chaos, he had embraced it. And by embracing it, he had conquered it.
[SSDay]
