"Ennui.........................."

”A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point the book is in limbo and doesn't come to life until the reader picks it up and the reader flips the pages.” – Alberto Manguel

Beyond its assigned definition applied by the Roman Catholic Church, limbo is “an uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition”. I’ve often utilized it to speak of that yearly pause between Christmas and January 1st. It occurs to me, however, that we often step into such an existence from time to time, much as if our journey loses meaning, as if all the everyday events that beset us suddenly become a noise in the background. The river, itself, still holds us; the clock yet ticks; but the point to everything, the “why”, suddenly holds us in its grip and it takes a bit of effort to break free of the logjam. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian professor of psychology who immigrated to this country in the fifties, speaks of a state of consciousness called “flow” wherein people are completely absorbed in an activity. The “key to happiness”, supposedly, is in our ability to control that portion of our identity by not allowing external forces to interrupt it. It is up to each of us to prepare for such attack by cultivating challenges that are neither too demanding nor too simple to achieve. I’ve another suggestion: When our story comes to such a dullness, when, in looking back, we wonder if there’s any real sense to our stagger down this path, try turning inward to another God-given “flow”, to a stream in whose depths we might discover refreshing, renewal, and a redefining of our worth in the middle of this whole mystery called life. Whether just a drink from His well or a dip in the pool, ankle-deep, knee-deep, or totally submerged, His “flow” reinforces us for the other flow and “life” begins again…….