I find it extremely difficult to articulate what I mean. I’ve gotten this feeling throughout my entire life, even when I was a child, and I’m sure there must be many others who’ve experienced it; I just can’t find any mention of it online.
I’ll give you an example. Sometimes you might be going from place to place, doing your own thing. When you’re done with whatever you were doing, you just… stop … and take in your surroundings. Suddenly the quietness around you seems to give you a tingling, comforting feeling that’s quite honestly a beautiful feeling.
I’m 22, and I’ve been getting this throughout my entire life; and heck, I even get it when playing videogames (particularly open-world games), if they’re immersive enough. The most common place I get this feeling in the real world is when I’ve been travelling in a car for a while (I don’t drive currently, usually it’s my mother driving me), and we reach our destination: The car stops; the engine turns off; the music on the radio goes silent, and I’m in no rush to hop out. For some reason this feeling rushes over me; it feels similar to butterflies and goes through my upper legs and stomach; even in my upper arms for some reason, but is all very comforting.
My earliest memory with it (although I know I had it years prior to this), was one day when I was 7-9 yrs old. I remember it quite vividly, actually. I don’t remember where I had come from (probably school or something), but my Mum had been driving me for what felt like quite a while. She pulled into our front driveway and stopped. The engine shut off; the radio went silent. It felt calming, and I didn’t get out of the car because I was just appreciating and enjoying the feeling of sitting in the quietness, with the subtle ticking sound coming from the cars engine you tend to hear when turning it off, just outside. My Mum said to me, something along the lines of “Why aren’t you hopping out, Liam?”. I don’t remember what I said in response, but I definitely had no idea how to explain the reason to her; I find it difficult to even explain now as a young adult.
Now, I’ve managed to learn where and when to just “stop”, and have this feeling come over me, like second-nature, but I still find that I can’t well explain when or how it happens with words; that’s why this post is so long.
As I said earlier, I also sometimes get this feeling when playing videogames. One of my favourite games of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (The sequel, too). It’s an open-world game where you can travel to almost every single nook and cranny of the land of Hyrule, on foot or by horse. One of the things I absolutely love the most, is just walking around the world, exploring, and taking it all in. I don’t care about defeating every single monster in every single enemy campsite across the world, or getting from place to place in the shortest time possible, or finding the most powerful loot or weapons; I just like to immerse myself in the world, like I’m actually there. And that feeling I described: I get it around almost every single corner, especially in out-of-the-way places like the top-edges of cliff-faces, where people in Hyrule never visit. In fact, I can give you an example: I was watching IGN’s video of the game from 2016 when it was still in development (video link is timestamped to where I want to show you), and because I had been watching this gameplay video for the past 20 minutes, I was very immersed and relaxed in the game world. As soon as the player climbed up to this rock that was protruding out of the cliff-face, he immediately turned around to stop and take a look at the view in the distance, due to being so high up. I immediately, immersed, had that feeling come over me again, and it felt so nice; as it always does.
Is there name for this? If so, what is this called? There has to be some kind of psychology behind all of this.
Liminality? The same liminal as in liminal space.
One definition is:
of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional
I think pop culture references to liminal spaces have caused the term to be conflated with creepy in recent parlance. But liminal is not synonymous with creepy. It describes a transitional period between two states. Like standing in the threshold between rooms.
Your descriptions seem consistent with this: E.g., when you talk about the car ride with your mother—that moment where the car was parked in the driveway, the radio silent, and maybe just the stirrings of the engine cooling down and errant drips from the compressor was the liminal space between your journey home, and whatever your routine was once you were home, whether it was homework or a snack or something else.
Lucky you! I’ve only experienced it a handful of times: most memorable at a rooftop shrine in a busy city, but in a quieter part of the city. And also at a large garden in the same city that happened to be quiet, i.e., not busy, at the time.
I don’t think quiet is a prerequisite though. I felt a similar sensation in airports when I was younger, even with the noise of all the people moving about. What made airports liminal for me was the realization that, in mere hours, all of us in the airport would all take different flights and be scattered across the world, and how fleeting it could all be.
If you’re only 22, then if you’re attending college, graduation might be another big one where you’ll get to experience the same sensation. Well, that moment after the ceremonies and dinner with the parents. You’ll have maybe a week or two where you move away from campus, and you’ll just be in this liminal state waiting to start a new job or grad school or whatever the next chapter of your life is.
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.