Three Days Before the Longest Night

The transformation happens in the waiting, not after it.

Photo by Philippa Lowe on Unsplash

We’re in between right now.

Three days before the Winter Solstice (December 21). The light is still retreating. The longest night of the year is approaching, but not yet here. We’re standing in the threshold, that uncomfortable space where what was is ending and what will be hasn’t yet arrived.

Every part of us wants to rush through.

What Thresholds Require

My doctoral research used a framework called threshold concepts, developed by Meyer and Land, to understand one aspect of transformative learning. A threshold concept is like a portal. Once you pass through it, you see differently. You can’t go back to not knowing.

But here’s what my research revealed: transformation doesn’t happen by leaping over the threshold. It happens by dwelling in the liminal space. The in-between. The uncomfortable not yet.

Students who rushed through troublesome material didn’t transform. They memorized. They performed understanding without embodying it. Real change required staying in the difficulty long enough for something to shift.

The same is true for seasons. For grief. For any genuine transition.

The Practice of Staying

The solstice will arrive whether we rush or not.

The light will begin its slow return. The year will turn. But something different happens if we’re present for the threshold rather than just enduring it.

What if these three days before the longest night are not empty waiting but active practice?

What if the threshold space is where the real work happens?

The trees aren’t rushing toward spring. The animals who’ve gone to ground aren’t anxious about emergence. The Earth itself is modeling what we resist: full presence in the dark, trust in the turning, stillness before the return.

An Invitation

Today, tomorrow, and the day after, notice your impulse to rush.

Notice the pull toward the next thing, the resolution, the light, the Christmas gifts. Then practice staying. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel what the threshold has to teach.

The longest night is almost here. We don’t have to race toward it or away from it.

We can simply be here, in the space between. Learning what only thresholds can teach.

The threshold isn’t the obstacle to transformation.

It is the transformation.

What threshold are you standing in right now? What would it mean to stay rather than rush?

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Are you a nature-minded individual seeking a deeper connection to ecospirituality, contemplative walking, and the more-than-human world?

Thanks for reading.

~ Jeffrey