Of all of the gods in ancient Rome, one of the most important and revered was Janus, the god of beginnings and boundaries. A uniquely Roman with no equivalent in the Greek pantheon of gods, Janus was arguably one of the most powerful gods for the Romans. While long forgotten by most of the world (there are a few Janusians left), the realm Janus ruled over is still relevant and topical today.

Janus is the god of doorways, gates, and transitions. Depicted with two faces, one looking back and the other looking forward, Janus ruled over the realm of beginnings and endings. He represented the middle between one thing and other. One face looked back to the past while the other face looked forward to the future. This captured his essence in that he straddled the boundary between the two realms locked in the present. Janus carried a key with him that was used to lock and unlock doors and gates to aid in transitions (a modern depiction of Janus can be found in the video game SMITE by Titan Forge Games. As a playable god, Janus had the ability to create portals, vortexes, thresholds, and mastery of space and time). 

Anytime you were about to enter an uncertain or unknown future, you prayed to Janus. Janus was the most important god in everyday life for the ancient Romans. As the god of transitions, Janus was invoked for births, deaths, marriages, plantings, harvests, the beginning and end of wars, festivals, new business ventures, trade, travel, the reaching of adulthood, the opening of the Senate, and countless other activities. Before worshipping other gods, Janus was worshipped to ensure success of other worships. His realm was the realm of ALL boundaries, thresholds, and transitions which were everywhere, hence his popularity. Whenever there was an end or a beginning, Janus was involved. In our calendar, the first month of the new year January gets its name from him. 

After the Roman Empire turned Christian, Janus and the other gods fell out of favor. The worship of Janus ended sometime in the 4th century AD when pagan cults were banned by Emperor Theodosius I. While Janus is no longer relevant today, what he stood for is. Boundaries, thresholds, and transitions are all around us today. Indeed, the pace of change is so fast that we are overwhelmed with the sheer number of them that we cross. Every day, it seems like some barrier has been broken or some boundary has been crossed. For the ancient Romans, Janus literally held the key to mastering both the crossings and the states of in-betweeness we so often find ourselves in. Reclaiming this mastery is critical for us to navigate life today. The starting point is to understand what we mean by transitions. 

Transitions are a change from one stage, state or place to another. We often refer to them as phases. Every time we transition, we cross a boundary or threshold of some type. When we turn 21, we transition from the innocence of youth to adulthood. At some point, we leave the workforce and transition to retirement. When we have children, we transition to parenthood. Caterpillars transition to butterflies. Whenever something changes from one state to another, it invokes the Janusian realm of transitions. Understanding the nature and dimensions of transitions is critical. 

The first dimension of transitions to be familiar with is the direction of the change. Some transitions are one way only. There is no going back. Once you turn 21, you are forever an adult, no going back to childhood. Other transitions are bidirectional. You the get married transitioning from being single, but a divorce makes you single again. Some transitions are permanent while some are not. 

The second dimension is whether we are crossing a boundary or threshold. Boundaries are usually thought of as fixed and rigid. They can be measured. We know the exact moment we cross them. Anything that has a numerical limit is a boundary. Tax brackets have an upper limit. Countries have a border. Cross it and you are in the next one. Thresholds, in contrast, are fuzzier, more fluid, and less precise. In sports, you will hear a team in the threshold of a championship. It simply means in the immediate future they will win one. The exact date is unclear. Young children always test thresholds, seeing exactly where the boundaries are. They seek clarity. There is less certainty when we cross some thresholds. 

Boundaries and thresholds have a difficulty dimension to them. How hard is it to cross? Chess has a rating system. As you learn to play well, increasing your rating is relatively easy. At some point in time, it gets hard, very hard. Achieving grandmaster status requires a significant investment of time and effort. Getting advanced college degrees fall into the same category. When seeking to cross a boundary or threshold, the question of difficulty is always present. The level of effort required must always be calculated. 

The fourth dimension to be aware of is time frame required to make the transition. Transitions can be sudden or drawn out, each transition phase having its own rhythm. It takes time for stock markets to go from a bull market to a bear market, some in as little as one month but typically averaging around eight months. Some transitions are more instantaneous. One day you are working, the next day you are unemployed. Some transitions happen slowly and then speed up as the threshold appears. The concept here is known as a tipping point, defined as a critical threshold where a small change pushes a complex system into an abrupt acceleration causing a new and often irreversible state. As Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises: “How did you go broke bankrupt? Two Ways. Gradually, then suddenly”. Once a tipping point is crossed, things can get out of hand quickly either for the better or for the worse. 

Boundaries and thresholds can be erased, blurred, or removed entirely. Some are permanent while others shift or erase. Take physical boundaries. A fence around the house is semi-permanent. It can be torn down. Mountains are physical boundaries that take eons to erode. They are permanent during our lifetimes. Conceptual boundaries have this same characteristic. Social norms define acceptable behavior in society which shift over time. What wasn’t acceptable 100 years ago is acceptable now. Fads and trends are forerunners of new behavior that may or may not become mainstream. Some social conventions are much more permanent. Our very nature is based on the biggest boundary of all: us and them. This tribalism is deeply rooted in our nature and is not going away. 

Finally, look for the themes that connect transitions over time. Think of a tapestry, where warp threads running vertically provide the foundational structure while weft threads running horizontally provide the design. If you look closely enough, you can trace the threads from beginning to end. Transitions are like that as well, connected by cause and effect over time. We call this process evolution, the study of change over time. Take for example economic systems which all societies must have to deal with scarcity of resources. From primitive economies where gifts were exchanged, economic systems moved from agricultural and barter based systems to feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism, planned economies, mixed, to platform economics we see today. 

While we often curse the boundaries we face (we would like to drive faster), boundaries and thresholds serve a purpose as a regulatory mechanism, seeking to impose some limit on behavior. This is an often overlooked dimension of boundaries. This essence is captured by Chesterton’s Fence, which states that you should never remove a barrier or boundary until you understand why it was put up in the first place. Taking down boundaries often leads to unintended consequences. A barrier to selling alcohol was erected in 1919 with the Prohibition. Designed to reduce crime and increase health, it had the exact opposite effect, as bootleggers rushed in to satisfy demand. Prohibition transformed the Mafia into a criminal powerhouse.

Janus serves to remind us that transitions, boundaries, thresholds, and barriers are deeply interwoven into the fabric of everyday life. They separate things into parts so that the whole may be more easily understood. They help us understand how the present evolved from the past, and give us insight into how the future will play out. This duality gives us insight. They define goals we wish to attain, risks we should avoid, and possibilities we should entertain. 

The best word we have that describes the nature of Janus today is liminality, the state of being in between two stages or in the middle of changing from one to another. Today we are more obsessed with liminality more than ever. The American Dream is fading away for many in the country, transitioning to a complex and murky future. The in-betweeness we are in is a great source of anxiety for younger as well as older generations. As the complexity of our times increase, so too will this anxiety, the pace of change, the crossing of boundaries, and the moments of in between we find ourselve. In these times, remember Janus, the God of Transitions. Learn to take advantage of the many possibilities that present themselves in the transitions that occur every day. Become the master of the realm of in-between.