• 2 Posts
  • 30 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
cake
Cake day: May 10th, 2024

help-circle





  • Based on how Wikipedia explains it in your link, I think the feeling I get from liminal spaces is similar, but not the exact same thing as what I described. Liminal spaces often elicit feeling often from an unexpected lack of something that should usually be there. For example, being in mega-sized stadium all by yourself, where there would usually be thousands of people at once, or walking around your school yard ultra early in the morning when nobody is around. This certainly produces a similar feeling to what I described in my post, but different, and I can still get the feeling in busy or loud environments, it’s just much rarer, and I haven’t experienced it enough to be able to tell exactly what sets it off in busy or noisy environments.

    I got it once in the last year when I visited the city of Melbourne, Australia. I arrived at Southern Cross railway station. I had to wait for a friend to pick me up from there. I stood out of the way and leaned against a wall right beside a Hungry Jacks (fast food franchise), and the feeling came over me when I observed my surroundings, despite being in a very busy and noisy environment. This is kind of an opposite situation to the feeling you get from liminal spaces.










  • Actually, now that you mentioned it, your experience does remind me of one that I used to get on rare occasions as a kid, but it felt different to this one and was separate. It was kind of like a sudden full-awareness state of mind of my surroundings, I can’t remember much of how it felt, but it was a positive feeling. I don’t think I’ve really felt it since I was at least 14 though, and I was quite recently wondering about it and why that might be, because I have another memory from when I was about 9-11 with this “other” feeling that’s similar but different to the one I originally mentioned; and seems to be the feeling that you experienced: I was walking by myself out of an outdoor car parking area of a shopping centre. It was out the back area of the car park, where there are usually very little cars. I suddenly had this feeling you seem to be talking about come over me, and I was actually thinking to myself, “I’m here… right now!”… I didn’t understand the significance of what “being here” meant, but those were just the only words that could come to my mind when I felt it. It was kind of like for a brief moment, I was… no longer mentally a child; I was fully aware of the young stage of my life that I was in, and fully aware that I was standing out in the open air of the world all by myself (mind you, at that age it wasn’t common for me to be alone). As soon as I continued on my way, I forgot about the feeling and mental-state, and life just continued on as a normal, ignorant child, unaware of the beautiful complexity of the world we live in.

    I’ve never heard of animalmaxxing before and can’t find a definition; but I’m assuming it’s the thing that animals do that you’re referring to? You could possibly be right about this all being related to that, as mammals. If I am somehow “animalmaxxing” (that sounds weird to say about myself 😂), I certainly can’t do it for as long as animals do; sitting around all day like goats and cows doing practically nothing.



  • Yeah, it’s like when I’m by myself out in the wild away from people, houses, or roads. I suddenly realise how constant noise is everywhere else in my life; especially because my house is right next to a highway which has cars and trucks passing constantly, and a train track right next to it too. And because I live in a country area of Australia, the night-time traffic suddenly becomes so small, that the difference in noise between day time and night time noise is massive. Even so, there’s always noise coming from somewhere: right now it’s from my keyboard and my computer fan, and it’s night, so I can’t hear any vehicles passing.


  • Maybe. But I’m not really sure if the definition fully matches up with the feeling. Assuming we are both talking about the same feeling (and I think we are), you seem to have experienced it from a couple of different things I’ve never experienced it from before. Namely, the one at the airport, where you got the feeling from knowing how far apart everyone will be from each other in only a matter of hours. I’ve never gotten it from anything like that before. I don’t really get the feeling from thinking about something or realising something specific like that, I just get it when I begin to “take in” my environment. Almost like I’m absorbing the atmosphere itself. And while I didn’t mention it, I myself am also capable of getting the feeling within a loud environment, like you. It’s just far less common for me.