“Why the most terrifying threshold is the one that leads to who you’re meant to become”
You’re standing at the edge of a cliff, or looking down from a tall building, and suddenly you feel it—that visceral, magnetic pull. Not a desire to jump, exactly, but an intrusive thought: What if I did?
Your heart pounds. Your body pulls back. The feeling is both terrifying and strangely compelling.
The French have a term for it: l’appel du vide. “The call of the void.”
There’s a scene in Netflix’s “The Beast in Me” that captures this feeling. Aggie Wiggs, a grieving author investigating her dangerous neighbor Nile, so she can write his story for a new book.
She agrees to meet Nile Jarvis at his massive real estate developmen in New Yorkt. She expects a conversation. Instead, he takes her up—high up—to one of the top floors of the still-under-construction Jarvis Yards tower.
No walls. No railings. Just exposed steel, wind, and a terrifying drop.
They stand there, twenty stories above the ground, as Nile interrogates her about whom she’s been talking to. Every word feels like a calculation. Every step toward the edge feels deliberate. Aggie realizes in real-time that this man could push her, and no one would ever know it wasn’t an accident.
She’s literally standing at the void. Feeling the call.
But here’s what’s fascinating about that scene: Aggie doesn’t just feel the physical danger. She feels something else. A different kind of edge. The threshold between her safe, grief-paralyzed existence and the dangerous, alive investigation she’s stepping into. Between the person she was and the person she’s becoming.
Because there’s another void that calls to us. And unlike the physical edge, this one doesn’t go away when we step back. In fact, it gets louder the longer we ignore it.
I’m talking about the void of your unlived life.
The void that actually matters
- We have many edges we walk to in life. And they ask us questions.
- That business you haven’t started.
- The book unwritten.
- The podcast not started and unrecorded.
- The creative work that keeps visiting you in quiet moments.
- The career pivot you’re “too old” for.
- The calling you’ve been circling for years, maybe decades.
You feel it, don’t you?
That pull towards a different version of your life. A version where you’re doing what you’re actually meant to do, not what you stumbled into or what seemed practical at 25.
And just like Aggie standing on that exposed floor, twenty stories up, you feel your whole system light up with warning signals:
- You’re too old for that
- You’ve invested too much in this path
- What about the mortgage?
- Who are you to think you could do that?
- It’s too late
Your brain screams “DANGER—STAY WHERE YOU ARE!”
And so you step back. You return to the ordinary world. The known. The safe.
But here’s the paradox that took me years to understand: with the physical void, stepping back is wisdom. With the void of your calling, stepping back is slow death.
The threshold in the hero’s journey
Joseph Campbell mapped this moment with precision. He called it the Threshold, and it’s the point in every hero’s story where everything hangs in balance.
You’re in the Ordinary World—your current life, your current identity, your current assumptions about who you are and what’s possible. It’s familiar. Maybe it’s even good. You might be successful by every external measure.
But there’s that persistent whisper. That call.
Campbell described the pattern:
- The Call comes—an invitation to adventure, to transformation, to becoming
- Refusal of the Call follows—all the reasons why not, why you can’t, why you shouldn’t
- The Threshold appears—the point of no return, the edge between worlds
- And you must choose: cross, or turn back
What makes crossing so terrifying?
You can’t see the other side. You don’t know what waits there.
Crossing requires the death of your current identity—and that feels like actual death. The you that has this job title, this reputation, this life story—that person has to die for someone new to be born.
Campbell put it beautifully: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.“
The threshold isn’t just scary. It’s supposed to be scary. That’s how you know it matters.
In The Beast in Me, when Aggie somehow finds her voice on that exposed floor—when she spits threats back at Nile and negotiates to continue their dangerous dance—she’s not just surviving a physical threat.
She’s crossing a threshold. From paralyzed griever to active seeker. From victim to investigator. From the person she was to the person she needs to become.
She returns to her friend’s car afterward, shaking and near tears. Because that’s what crossing looks like. Terror. Release.
That invites “Transformation.’’
Two voids, two very different calls
Let me show you something that changed how I think about this:
L’appel du vide (the physical edge):
- A momentary intrusive thought
- Random, meaningless
- Goes away when you step back
- Tests your survival instinct
- Healthy people feel it and retreat
The call of your purpose:
- A persistent whisper across years
- Deeply personal, laden with meaning
- Gets louder the longer you ignore it
- Tests your life instinct
- Healthy people eventually must step forward
Do you see the reversal?
With the physical void, you feel the pull and step back—that’s your survival instinct working correctly. But with your calling, your unlived life, your authentic path? If you keep stepping back, you’re not surviving. You’re dying by degrees.
The real danger isn’t the jump. It’s never jumping.
I learned this the hard way. At 50, my life looked steady enough from the outside. I had a good job, a mortgage, a career I’d spent decades building. But inside, everything was quietly collapsing. I was drowning in corporate burnout and debt, waking up each morning feeling like I was losing pieces of myself I couldn’t afford to lose.
What most people don’t know is that my personal life was fraying too. Not in explosive, dramatic ways, but in the slow erosion that happens when you’re physically present and spiritually absent. I was exhausted, disconnected, and starting to feel like a ghost in my own life.
The real threshold wasn’t leaving my job.
It was admitting that staying — in that job, in that identity, in that version of myself — was the real cliff.
And stepping forward was the only way to stop the freefall inside.
Why we stand at the edge (But don’t jump)
So why do so many of us spend years, even decades, at the threshold? Why do we feel the call so clearly but refuse to cross?
Because we’re brilliant at disguising fear as wisdom.
How my own fear uressed up as ‘Practicality’
For years, I told myself I was being responsible. Staying put. Doing the smart adult thing. But underneath that so-called wisdom was fear…fear of not being enough, fear of failing publicly, fear of blowing up a life I’d worked so hard to build.
I stayed in jobs that drained me because I convinced myself I was protecting my family.
I ignored the growing distance in my personal relationships because exhaustion had become normal.
I kept performing the role of the reliable one while quietly losing my sense of aliveness.
Fear didn’t show up as panic.
It showed up as spreadsheets, budgets, and believable excuses.
And that’s when I realized something:
Practicality can become a prison when it keeps you from becoming who you’re meant to be.
Here are a few ways you could be masking your fear:
- Economic fear masquerades as practicality: “I need to wait until I have more saved.” (You’ll never have enough saved for the leap to feel safe—that’s not how thresholds work.)
- Social conditioning masquerades as realism: “Be realistic.” (Translation: “Be like everyone else who never crossed their threshold.”)
- Age narratives masquerade as truth: “That’s for younger people.” (As if your twenties are the only decade for becoming who you’re meant to be. As if 40, 50, 60 aren’t exactly when most people finally know themselves well enough to hear their real calling.)
- Success in the wrong life creates golden handcuffs: You’ve built something. It works. People respect it. Walking away feels ungrateful, crazy, reckless.
But here’s what’s really happening: your soul’s survival system is screaming “TRANSFORM OR DIE.” But because we’ve been conditioned to equate transformation with risk, we hear it as “STAY SAFE.”
We misread the signal. Just like l’appel du vide.
The warning isn’t telling you to step back. It’s telling you the stakes are real. It’s telling you this matters. It’s telling you that you’re at a genuine threshold, and genuine thresholds are supposed to be intense.
Think about Aggie on that floor. Every instinct screams danger. And she was right—there was real danger. But the greater danger would have been never going up there in the first place. Never investigating. Never knowing. Never becoming the person who could stand on that edge and not back down.
The freedom code: Crossing while building the bridge
When I consult with people, we don’t start with “quit your job and follow your passion.” That’s terrible advice. That’s jumping off the cliff without a parachute.
Instead, we use what I call the Freedom Code—five stages that let you cross the threshold while building the bridge beneath your feet:
1. DISCOVER: Stand at the edge honestly
Before you can cross, you need clarity about what’s actually calling you. And that’s not based on your resume or what would impress others. What is it that truly calls?
This requires reflective intelligence—the capacity to think deeper, not faster. To ask better questions:
And it is the intersection of many elements.
- What activities make me lose track of time?
- What would I do if money weren’t a factor?
- When have I felt most alive?
- What do people come to me for that feels effortless?
Most people skip this step. They confuse ego desires with soul calling. They chase what looks good on Instagram rather than what resonates in their bones.
Aggie didn’t start by investigating Nile because it was safe or smart. She did it because something in her recognized: this is what I need to do. This is who I need to become.
2. CREATE: Make small moves before big leaps
You don’t need to see the whole path. You need to see the next step.
When I started writing my blog, I didn’t tell anyone. It was the only place in my life where I felt awake, and I didn’t want to contaminate that feeling with expectations. So I wrote late at night, in the quiet hours when the world wasn’t asking anything of me.
A handful of readers turned into hundreds.
Hundreds turned into thousands.
And thousands turned into millions.
At last count nearly 40 million people have visited and read my words.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, I was building a new life alongside the one that was breaking.
I created before I leapt.
I tested small offers.
I made my first online income while still working a full-time job that was slowly killing my spirit.
The bridge didn’t appear magically.
I built it one piece at a time until the moment came when it could hold my weight.
Then I crossed.
So, here’s my advice: Start parallel infrastructure. Keep your current life while building the new one. Write on weekends. Start the side project. Take the course. Have conversations. Build the prototype.
This isn’t about lacking commitment. It’s about being smart. Most successful transitions happen this way—not with a dramatic leap, but with intentional bridge-building.
When I started my digital media journey while still in corporate hell, I didn’t burn bridges. I built new ones. By the time I left, the new path was already forming.
3. SHARE: Transform isolation into connection
When my blog started gaining traction, something unexpected happened: strangers became my allies. People I’d never met resonated with the things I was too afraid to say out loud to the people closest to me.
The more I shared, the less alone I felt.
The less alone I felt, the braver I became.
Sharing wasn’t a marketing tactic — it was how I stitched myself back together.
It reconnected me to others and, more importantly, to myself.
I used to think connection came after success.
But the truth is, connection is what makes the crossing possible.
The threshold feels lonelier than it actually is. You think you’re the only one struggling with this decision, feeling this call, facing this fear.
You’re not.
And when you share and are seen you have affirmation.
And when that happens you feel motivation.
Find your fellowship—the people who’ve crossed similar thresholds, who understand the terrain. Share your journey, not just your highlight reel. Your honest struggle gives someone else permission to begin.
Your calling and purpose collapses when you don’t share your passion with the world.
Share your gift.
The hero never crosses alone. There’s always a mentor, a guide, a companion. Sometimes that’s a person. Sometimes it’s a practice. Sometimes it’s a platform that helps you think better.
4. MONETIZE: Make the transition sustainable
Here’s where most people get stuck: “How will I survive?”
Valid question. Essential question. But it can’t be the only question, or it becomes the excuse that keeps you from ever crossing.
The goal isn’t to make your first dollar on the other side. The goal is to generate revenue before you fully transition. Test the market. Find your early adopters. Validate that what you’re building has value.
Test the question: “Will the world pay me for this?”
Revenue before resignation.
Always.
5. AMPLIFY: Light the way for others
Once you’ve crossed—even partially—you have something precious: proof that it’s possible. Your story becomes medicine for someone else standing at their threshold, terrified.
This isn’t about being a guru. It’s about being a guide. Sharing what you learned in the crossing. Helping others avoid the mistakes you made. Showing that the threshold, while real, is passable.
The hero returns to illuminate the path.
The real question
Not “What if I jump?” but “What if I don’t?”
I’m 40, 50, 60, looking back. I see the threshold I refused to cross. The calling I ignored. The person I might have become. The impact I might have had. The life I might have lived.
That’s the real void. The real fall. The real tragedy.
Joseph Campbell said it this way: “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.“
Not who you should be. Not who looks safe. Not who earns approval. Who you are. Who you’re meant to become.
And accessing that requires crossing thresholds. Multiple thresholds. Repeatedly throughout your life.
The difference between people who flourish and people who fade isn’t talent or luck or timing. It’s the willingness to cross when the call comes.
Standing at your threshold
If you’re reading this, you’re probably standing at a threshold right now.
You feel the call. You know what it’s asking of you. And you’re terrified.
Good. That means it matters. Thresholds that don’t scare you aren’t thresholds—they’re sidewalks.
But let me ask you something: What’s the cost of not crossing?
Not in five years. Not in a decade. Right now, today, what’s the cost of turning back again?
The tiredness. The quiet desperation. The sense of watching your life from the outside. The growing certainty that you’re betraying something essential by playing it safe.
That’s the real void. And it’s calling you.
You don’t need to see the whole path. You don’t need guarantees. You don’t need to be fearless.
You just need to take the next right step. And then the next.
The difference between falling and flying
Here’s the truth that took me decades to learn: both falling and flying involve stepping off the edge. Both involve that moment of terror where everything you know drops away.
But falling is surrender to gravity—to the pull of least resistance, to other people’s expectations, to the path that requires nothing of you.
Flying is surrender to something higher—to your calling, your purpose, the person you came here to become.
Same threshold. Different relationship to the void.
L’appel du vide—the physical kind—feels dangerous but means you’re safe. Your survival instinct is working. The call of your unlived life feels safe to ignore, but it’s actually lethal. To your soul, your potential, your one precious existence.
When Aggie stood on that exposed floor, twenty stories up, she had a choice. Step back to safety. Or stand there, speak her truth, and cross into the dangerous territory of becoming.
She chose to cross. Not because she wasn’t afraid. But because the alternative—never knowing, never becoming, never answering the call—was worse than any physical danger Nile could threaten.
The series ends with Aggie transformed. Not healed—transformation isn’t about healing. It’s about becoming. She wrote her book. She told her truth. She crossed her threshold.
And in the final scene, you see her: grounded, present, alive in a way she wasn’t at the beginning. Not because she’s free of grief or fear or doubt. But because she answered the call.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. The void that calls to you isn’t asking you to die.
It’s asking you to finally, fully, live.
What threshold are you standing at right now? What’s calling you forward, and what’s holding you back? I’d love to hear your story—the honest, unvarnished version. Because somewhere, someone else is standing at the exact same threshold, feeling exactly the same fear, needing exactly the permission your story could give them.
This is what I built Zyrro to support: not thinking faster, but thinking deeper. Not replacing your wisdom with AI, but amplifying your capacity for the reflection that reveals what truly calls to you. Because the most important decisions of your life aren’t about information—they’re about insight. And insight requires someone, or something, asking you the right questions.
Think deeper. Act wiser. Flourish faster.
The threshold is waiting.
The post When the Void Calls, So Do Life’s Biggest Adventures appeared first on jeffbullas.com.
* This article was originally published here
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