Image and Pilgrimage - Peter Ikeda

Turner's book Image and Pilgrimage discusses the concept of liminality. Turner describes it as "the state and process of mid-transition in a rite of passage" saying that "during the liminal period, the characteristics of the liminars are ambiguous" (248). Liminality is the threshold state one undergoes during a transformation. Those who are considered liminal are "stripped of status and authority, removed from a social structure maintained and sanctioned by power and force, and leveled to a homogeneous social state" (248). Basically when one undergoes a journey they are considered liminal because during that journey or quest they are no longer what they once were yet they are not what they will be. I was trying to apply this term to my own life, thinking about if I've ever been 'liminal'. Nothing sprang to mind because although I've grown and changed a lot I never went through an actual vision quest or pilgrimage to change myself. And then I got to thinking about life and how although I've never been through one of these quests I've still grown substantially through the years, each year bringing new changes and I've gone through social statuses and personalities, growing more and more into who I believe I was created to be. Thinking this way is it too far out to say that life itself is liminal? I mean if you think about it life is a journey in which we are constantly changing and growing; learning new lessons and sometimes to the point of being stripped to the core. Granted, there are social norms and such that we're subjected to but for the most part I feel like if you look at the big picture, life itself is a liminal journey in which we are growing and changing, never really staying the same for too long.