The idea of the "turning point" comes from ancient Greek chariot racing. Chariot racing was originally part of funeral games and could also be done to honor a hero in a re-enactment of funeral games. When you are racing a chariot, you would come to a "point" where you would need to make a left turn. It wasn't a track like what we have now. It was far closer to a "down and back" kind of trajectory. The turning point, traditionally, is associated with the grave of a hero. You would be going around the grave of a hero. The turning point is the most dangerous part of the race. First, in the actual mechanics of making a tight left turn in a chariot, you have to reign the left horse in hard while letting the right run as fast as it can. This is very hard to manage. But morally, it also demonstrates your skill in managing both control and impulse and the way in which you can integrate both. If you think about the metaphor from Plato about the charioteer (the higher rational soul) and its ability to drive the horses (the part that has the noble moral impulses, and the part that has the appetites) and then think about the fact that Plato would have understood this within chariot racing...there are these points in which you have to make the turn and managing these various parts of self and if you can do it correctly, (far more complicated because you have to treat the horses differently, but in concert), then you can be victorious. And it is in that moment, as you are turning at the grave of the hero, in which you are closest to the otherworlds because you are either very close to death (if things go badly and you crash, you will likely die) or you are resembling one of the divine heroes in managing to hold everything inside and out in just the right type of tension. Anyway, that is my current meditation on turning points and I think that mindset might be important when we identify "turning points" in life, our organizations, and society. They are liminal moments of great power and peril.
