The phrase “for now” often sounds light. Practical. It keeps doors open. But in some lives, this phrase stretches. It spreads across years. And at a certain point, it stops being a time marker and starts becoming a way of living.
In migration, academia, temporary contracts or prolonged legal processes, people can find themselves living inside an extended waiting period without fully noticing it. They move but they do not quite settle. They make plans but hesitate to believe in them. From the outside, this may look like indecision. From the inside, it often feels more like cautious self-preservation.
In psychology and anthropology, there are concepts that come close to describing this state. Victor Turner’s idea of liminality, for instance, being neither here nor there. Yet in everyday life this threshold condition does not always pass quickly. When it lingers, it begins to reshape how a person relates to time itself. Erik Erikson’s work on identity reminds us that identity is formed not only through the past but also through a sense of future direction. When the future remains postponed, people may find themselves suspending not only their plans but parts of their sense of self.
What is striking is that this experience is rarely dramatic. People continue working, producing, forming relationships. Life goes on. Yet an inner sense of rootedness does not fully develop. Everything can begin to feel provisional, as if lived in draft mode. Donald Winnicott once wrote about the importance of a “spontaneous living space.” In prolonged uncertainty, that space can quietly narrow. One lives but without fully landing.
This is why the feeling of temporariness often appears less like a problem and more like an adaptation. People do get used to it. But adaptation is not always the same as healing. Sometimes it simply means lowering the intensity of emotional investment not refusing attachment but approaching it with caution.
From a psychosocial support perspective, the aim is not to push individuals toward quick stability or forced optimism. It is more about noticing that continuity can exist even within uncertainty. Small routines, familiar places, recurring conversations, creative or professional anchors, these do not eliminate instability but they help maintain psychological contact. Often, it is these modest repetitions that keep a sense of self from thinning out.
Over time, temporariness can shift from being an external condition to becoming an internal perception. Is life truly temporary or has the feeling of temporariness itself become permanent? The distinction is not always clear. Perhaps the real psychological task is learning how to take up space in one’s own life before everything is resolved, to inhabit the present, even without full certainty.