On the Threshold

Passages, revolutions, conversions, therapies, limit situations – all are dramatic examples of existentially significant thresholds. They are all usually associated, more or less explicitly, with concrete places, buildings or roads. But is it also the other way round? Do the concrete, fairly everyday thresholds, such as the threshold to my office in the introduction, also have existential significance? Do they also symbolise an entry and a transition of some kind? If the threshold is a symbol, not just an image, we can expect that the concrete thresholds we encounter in our everyday lives bear some of the characteristics of the more dramatic examples of thresholds.