Welcome to Budapest

Just over a week ago I was heading to the city from the Budapest airport after a long international flight from Toronto when a holy **** feeling collapsed upon my shoulders. All of my luggage had made it across the ocean with me, the weather was beautiful, and I was returning to a city that I loved to take part in a dream internship at the National Museum of Fine Arts, but all I could do was think that I had just possibly made the biggest mistake of life.

It’s not like I have never travelled in a foreign country, or lived away from my family, friends and home before, so why was I spending my first day of this exciting adventure cooped up in a phone booth teary-eyed and panicked with my now incredibly concerned parents on the line?

Surprisingly, my undergraduate education helped me answer this question upon reflection in the past days, and I’ve realized that this confused, overwhelmed and somewhat scared disposition came about because I’ve entered a defining liminal state in my life.

According to philosophy’s favourite uncle, Pierre Bourdieu, liminality is “a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed…and ones sense of identity disolves to some extent bringing about disorientation”. Within the past few weeks I’ve graduated from university, started to plan my career, have seen many friends move away from home and now myself have moved (temporarily) half-way across the world. Am I in a liminal state? I think so.

Bourdieu’s buzzword roots in a Latin term that translates into “a threshold”, and he tells us that this transitory time leaves us open to numerous possibilities, leading to new perspectives and discoveries about ourselves and the world around us. So all being said, and now feeling settled and much better about…life, I’m excited about the months to come and the experiences, adventures and unplanned shenanigans I’m in for.