What rites of passage reveal about being in between

HostWe all know that feeling of being in a middle spot. Like when you have moved out of your old house, the boxes are all packed, but you haven’t quite moved into the new one yet. You're just sort of floating. It's an odd, restless feeling. But humans have always found a way to turn those gaps into something much bigger than just a move. Why do we put so much weight on these moments when we're neither here nor there?

GuestWe give it weight because that middle space is where the real change happens. It's the hallway between two rooms. If you just walked from one room straight into the next, you might not even notice the shift. But when you're held in that hallway, you start to feel the weight of what you're leaving behind and what you're about to become. In a lot of groups, they treat this middle time as a kind of death. You have to die as a child before you can be born as a grown-up. It's not just a change in how you act. It's a change in who you're deep down.

HostThat sounds a bit heavy for just growing up. I mean, surely it's more of a slow slide. You don't just wake up one day and say, okay, I'm done being a kid. It happens over years. Why try to squeeze it into a week in the woods?

GuestYou're right that the body takes its time, but the mind and the group need a sharp line. Without that line, everything gets blurry. Think about how we treat people in these middle spots. Often, they're pushed to the edge of the camp or the town. They might be told to stay quiet or wear masks. This does something to the brain. When you lose your name and your face for a few days, you lose your old self. You stop being the person that everyone knows. That's the only way to make room for the new version of you. If you don't clear out the old house, you can't bring in the new furniture.

HostSo, it's about making space. But what about the parts that aren't just about losing things? A lot of these rites seem pretty rough. There's often some kind of test or even a bit of pain involved. That feels like more than just clearing out a house. It feels like a way to scare someone into a new role.

GuestIt's not just about fear, though that's part of it. The pain or the hard work acts like a kind of glue. When you go through something tough in that middle space, it burns the memory into your mind. You can't go back to being a child after that. You have seen things or done things that the old you couldn't have handled. It's a way of proving to yourself that you have changed. If it were easy, you wouldn't believe it. You would just think you were the same person in a different hat. The struggle is what makes the new you feel real.

HostI'm still not sure I buy the glue thing. Could you not just have a nice dinner and a talk? Why does it have to be a trial? It feels like we're just making things hard for the sake of it.

GuestA dinner is a nice gesture, but it doesn't change your gut feeling. Think about how we learn things. We usually learn the most when we're a bit uncomfortable. In that middle stage, you're more open than you'll ever be. You're raw. Since you don't have your old role to hide behind, the things you learn during the rite go straight to the core. It's like when you're traveling in a place where you don't speak the language. You're more alert. You're watching everything because you don't have your usual safety nets. That's what the middle does. It takes away the nets so you have to learn how to walk again.

HostThat's an interesting way to put it. You're more alert because you're lost. But what happens when the rite is over? You can't just stay in the hallway forever.

GuestThat's the danger of the in-between. If you stay there too long, you become a ghost. You don't belong anywhere. That's why the last step is so vital. You have to be brought back into the group. But you're brought back as a new person. People look at you differently. They use your new name. They give you new jobs to do. If the group doesn't see the change, the change didn't really happen. The middle only works if there's a clear after.

HostSo it's as much about how other people see us as it's about how we see ourselves. I guess I see that in small ways today. Like, when someone gets a degree, they walk across a stage. It's just a walk, but when they step off the other side, everyone claps for a graduate. The walk is the hallway.

GuestYeah, and even though it's just a stage, for that minute or two, they're not quite a student anymore, but they haven't started their career yet. They're in that thin slice of time where anything is possible. We need those moments because life is messy and slow. We need to grab the clock and say, here, right here, is where the world changed.

HostBut do you think we're losing that? Nowadays, it feels like we just drift from one thing to the next. There aren't many clear hallways anymore. We're just always sort of in-between everything.

GuestWe're definitely losing the big, loud ones, and it shows. When you don't have a clear way to mark the end of one life and the start of the next, you end up with people who are twenty or thirty years old but still feel like they're waiting for their life to start. They're stuck in a permanent middle. Without a rite of passage, you don't get that snap where you realize you're responsible for yourself now. We still try to make our own, though. Some people use a big trip, or a marathon, or even a tattoo. We're still looking for ways to mark our own skin and say, the person I was is gone.

HostIt's almost like we're trying to build our own hallways because the world stopped providing them.

GuestWe're, but it's harder to do it alone. The whole point of the middle space is that it's supposed to be guided. You shouldn't be wandering that hallway by yourself. You need someone on the other side waiting to pull you through and tell you who you're now. It's a group effort to make a new person.

HostThe most striking thing about these no-man's-lands is that while they feel lonely, they're actually where we're most connected to the people who came before us. We're all just people standing in the dark, waiting to see who we'll become when the lights come back on.

GuestEvery person who has ever grown up has had to stand in that same darkness and wonder if they would make it out the other side.

HostThe door frame might be a small space to stand in, but it's the only place where we can actually see both where we have been and where we're going.