About

“Prague does not have its name for no reason – in truth, Prague is a threshold between the life on Earth and Heaven, a threshold much thinner and narrower than in any other places…”

― Gustav Meyrink

A threshold is most commonly thought of as a doorway or similar place of entry, a transition from one space to another. Sometimes, we use the word to describe the onset of something, a beginning. And a threshold can also refer to the intensity that must be exceeded to produce a certain effect, like when we talk about our threshold for pain. In this way, I think of a threshold as a dividing line, that narrow space between two contrasting forces: ignorance and wisdom, darkness and light, laughter and sorrow, joy and grief. It is this narrow space in between that, to me, feels mysterious, unknown, intangible.  It also feels like, maybe, this is the space in which we can transform ourselves. It is this space I really want to understand.

It was during my first year of living and working in Prague that I initially discovered this narrow space for myself. Young and freshly out of college, it was the year I first set out on my own, discovering who I really was and all that I hoped to be. It was a year filled with the light of joy, promise, and potential, the very best I had yet experienced in my 23 years. And then, with the sudden death of my sister, Cathy, in that same year, it was also the absolute worst: the year that I was first plunged into the overwhelming darkness that accompanies grief and loss. 

That year and that place have always felt like a threshold of sorts for me: a transition line between who I was and who I came to be. What I experienced and felt in that year represent another kind of threshold for me, one I have questioned and sought to understand more deeply over the last twenty years: What is that narrow line between joy and grief? What is the relationship between these two forces, these two emotions that so often push up again each other, the intensity of one giving way to the full experience of the other? Are they, as has so often been argued, simply two sides of the same coin? Must we experience one to fully realize the other? And can these two feelings coexist simultaneously within the same moment, or are they mutually exclusive?

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.” 

― William Blake

Here, in this space, I seek to explore that narrow line between joy and grief – that thinnest threshold – as it has manifested in my own life, starting from that year in Prague and continuing throughout the years that followed. Thank you for joining me. 

– Caroline