Forbidden Places
Jan 03, 2026
☩ ☩ ☩ An Existential Excavation ☩ ☩ ☩
There you sit, my arch-nemesis.
But really, you are no such thing. You’re just a guitar. My guitar; one of a few.
Perhaps one of the reasons I avoid you until I can’t is because I’m afraid that the music might have abandoned me. It’s not a matter of technical competency; I can still play.
I’m just unsure if I’m blocking my muse or if she has moved on to greener pastures.
Maybe it’s because I don’t hear as well as I once did, and am unsure of my intonation. I had a person who used to be a friend say (with great glee) that he heard me sing out of tune once.
Perhaps it is because I don’t want to face the inevitability of there being a last song.
I once told a friend—a good friend who really was a friend—how absurd I thought it was that someday there would be a last story between us, a last bad joke, a last walk to the beach.
I don’t remember when the last one was, but that friend is six years’ gone now, dead and gone.
It is correctly said that endings can bring new beginnings. But everything ends eventually.
Never mind all that; our job is to experience everything we can while we are here, to make it up as we go (that’s what everyone is doing, really) and live while we are alive.
Explore and travel and think, and say “yes” to everything you can. Push life to the edge, because nobody can tell you that you can’t.
But beware of that edge, when you reach it.
Some boundaries must be respected; some thresholds should not be crossed.
A lady once traveled a considerable distance to study with me. Sought me out and said she wanted to learn about the kinds of things I didn’t teach in college. I cautiously agreed (because how did she even know?) on the condition that she would stop if I advised it.
I did, and she didn’t. A long time later, when she came back, changed, she said, “I lost my privilege to go there.”
We each have some place we are forbidden to go. If you don’t yet know yours, you will, if you live long enough.
You may not immediately realize you are at a threshold, a liminal space between experience and catastrophe. You will feel it as you approach, and—being human and properly adventurous—you will test it, to see if it means business.
When you do, you will know that it does.
Congratulations; you have found the limits of what you are meant to do while you are here. Don’t go back there.
None of this is an excuse to shrink from challenge, from scary possibilities. Be bold! These thresholds are another thing entirely. You will know them when you find them.
It’s never as simple as it sounds, you know that by now.
Proscribed provinces feel good, better than anything. When you approach them, the black hole-tractor beam-gravity well of their illicit siren song will attempt to suck you in.
Stand your ground. Steel your will.
Hic sunt dracones.
Best to sense and avoid them entirely. Second best to escape as quickly as possible. To linger is to carry scars.
How do you resolve karmic debt, break the cycle of saṃsāra, escape from hell?
How much hot water does it take to wash away your sins?
True transformation is a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. Might redeem you. Might condemn you. No way to know until you’re on the other side.
But leap you must and leap you will, lest you betray the terrible freedom of your consciousness.
So brush your teeth and turn out the light. Tomorrow is already on its way, and will be here soon enough. 
My novel, The Calling is available now in print and as an eBook.
Click here to subscribe to SHADOW & STAR, my free weekly newsletter.
To learn more about how to use these concepts or to inquire about working with me, go to the Jeff W Welsh website, subscribe to my Substack or Medium accounts or the Hardcore Happiness blog page, and follow my Instagram account for daily insights.
- JWW
Subscribe to the HARDCORE HAPPINESS blog
Never miss a post, and get goodies meant only for our community!
We will never sell your info. Ever. EVER!
