Betwixt and Between

When I am not caught up in writing an exciting scene in one of my novels, I am working in an IB (international baccalaureate) school. We come thundering back to campus in early August. While many are still kicking up sand on the beach, our summer has ended. We are already back-to-school.

Every adult can still recall the excitement found in the first days of school. The smell of a new pink eraser, lining up colored pencils with never-used points that promise a rainbow of fun, placing crisp sheets of paper in glossy folders, and wearing the newest, coolest jeans. We are sluiced with the thrilling anticipation of what might just happen tomorrow. We hunger for the unknown found in each new classroom. The flip side—plenty of strangers, getting lost in the halls, sitting alone at lunch—is best forgotten; a memory we all deny yet share.

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Life’s changes are like those first days of school: full of promise and edged with doubt, both intriguing and intimidating, thrilling and unnerving. I have finally realized that life is meant to be heavily peppered with uncertainty and left wide open to alterations. Indeed, I am most vibrantly alive when on the edge of betwixt and between. You know…stretched taut, reaching for a rising opportunity while those toes cling to the familiar shore of yesterday, waffling between the known and the unexplored. Well, it's time to hop off the bus, go down an unfamiliar street, and discover a newly opened door.
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I am utterly certain that life is meant to be filled with mystery.