I've had a pretty ambivalent relationship with rituals all my life. In that I don't particularly like them, but sometimes I need them. They can be a nice, powerful anchoring energy... or just a really fuckin heavy anchor.
I've spent a big chunk of my life bouncing between several different jobs, contracts, and countries. And while I've managed to retain the same friends for the past some years, I've got lots of little groups of them to move between. So. What does ritual mean to me? Lately, I've been thinking about the rare rare times in my life when "ritual" has worked. When a constant felt comforting and not stagnating...
Ok, there was the invaluable ritual of going to tai chi twice a week, which gave me two much-need weekly excuses to leave my house in the dead of winter and socialize. I would say this same ritual helped me through a fair bit of depression as well. Um... sushi? Does sushi count? How about brunch??
Truth told, the only time I think it's actually worked was in Cambodia. Against all odds, I managed not only to spend 3 months doing the same thing every bloody day, but I managed to love it, like really feel connected to the ritual. Partly, I think, because I was was so proud of myself for not going rights nuts and succumbing to sheer and utter boredom. Which, to this day, absolutely blows my mind. I was in a remote village with no electricity, no running water, no TV, no pool table, no lights, no books... no distractions. There was one "mountain" (really just a hill) a scooter ride away, but basically, it was never-ending rice fields in all four directions, and not much to explore, with no means to explore it even if there was. My life was scheduled by the hour. The same thing every day:
Wake Up
Make a meal
Eat a meal
Teach
Make a meal
Eat a Meal
Teach
Teach again
Make a meal
Eat a meal
Light a candle/Watch the bugs/Chat/Chain smoke cigarettes and have an occasional joint
Go to Bed
EVERY DAY. Like the only variations were laundry day and getting invited to a neighbour's house for dinner. And I LOVED IT.
Yes, there are obvious factors. I'd been on the road for a long time before I got to Cambodia; I was tired and needed a place to lay my head. But the other major factor was the people. Frank, Anke, Babsie and I were a tight little unit and became incredibly close by circumstance. We never fought, were never awkward or uncomfortable with each other (except for that one time we got too stoned...) and just managed to pool our best qualities for the others to draw on. The people in the village were an endless source of amusement and entertainment, sometimes frustrating and sometimes just the most beautiful revelation.
I've always likened my time in Cambodia to the dizzy syndrome You remember, as kids, how we'd spin ourselves around and then stop and watch the world keep tumbling? I imagined myself as this kid who'd spun herself round and round and round for over a year, bouncing from one country to the next, and then, suddenly, I stopped. And the coolest thing happened- the world kept spinning. I was doing the same thing every day, but suddenly, experiences were finding me. Every big and little thing became totally interesting; every experience a lesson that I could draw on.
I'm sitting here thinking of all this because, yeah, I guess it just depends on the ritual. This 9-6 one, for example, kind of bites. I don't understand how people can breathe life into it, make it fresh, reinvent it. I don't understand how people can watch all their daylight hours slip by through a window (and btw, I don't even have a window) for 10 years and not realize that there are much better things out there to waste their time and energy on. And the thing is, I LIKE my job, so I can't even begin to understand the people who are putting up with this that don't. I guess I should admire their... stamina.
So what is ritual to me? Ritual is the Jedi mind trick of making some place old look new again. Ritual is revisiting myself every couple of years, watching younger and older versions of me spar and dance. Ritual is using the tools I've crafted over my lifetime to learn something new every day. Ritual can't be the same, it has to be different. However subtle the movement, it has to move.
... I think that's my subtle way of saying I need a vacation.
I've spent a big chunk of my life bouncing between several different jobs, contracts, and countries. And while I've managed to retain the same friends for the past some years, I've got lots of little groups of them to move between. So. What does ritual mean to me? Lately, I've been thinking about the rare rare times in my life when "ritual" has worked. When a constant felt comforting and not stagnating...
Ok, there was the invaluable ritual of going to tai chi twice a week, which gave me two much-need weekly excuses to leave my house in the dead of winter and socialize. I would say this same ritual helped me through a fair bit of depression as well. Um... sushi? Does sushi count? How about brunch??
Truth told, the only time I think it's actually worked was in Cambodia. Against all odds, I managed not only to spend 3 months doing the same thing every bloody day, but I managed to love it, like really feel connected to the ritual. Partly, I think, because I was was so proud of myself for not going rights nuts and succumbing to sheer and utter boredom. Which, to this day, absolutely blows my mind. I was in a remote village with no electricity, no running water, no TV, no pool table, no lights, no books... no distractions. There was one "mountain" (really just a hill) a scooter ride away, but basically, it was never-ending rice fields in all four directions, and not much to explore, with no means to explore it even if there was. My life was scheduled by the hour. The same thing every day:
Wake Up
Make a meal
Eat a meal
Teach
Make a meal
Eat a Meal
Teach
Teach again
Make a meal
Eat a meal
Light a candle/Watch the bugs/Chat/Chain smoke cigarettes and have an occasional joint
Go to Bed
EVERY DAY. Like the only variations were laundry day and getting invited to a neighbour's house for dinner. And I LOVED IT.
Yes, there are obvious factors. I'd been on the road for a long time before I got to Cambodia; I was tired and needed a place to lay my head. But the other major factor was the people. Frank, Anke, Babsie and I were a tight little unit and became incredibly close by circumstance. We never fought, were never awkward or uncomfortable with each other (except for that one time we got too stoned...) and just managed to pool our best qualities for the others to draw on. The people in the village were an endless source of amusement and entertainment, sometimes frustrating and sometimes just the most beautiful revelation.
I've always likened my time in Cambodia to the dizzy syndrome You remember, as kids, how we'd spin ourselves around and then stop and watch the world keep tumbling? I imagined myself as this kid who'd spun herself round and round and round for over a year, bouncing from one country to the next, and then, suddenly, I stopped. And the coolest thing happened- the world kept spinning. I was doing the same thing every day, but suddenly, experiences were finding me. Every big and little thing became totally interesting; every experience a lesson that I could draw on.
I'm sitting here thinking of all this because, yeah, I guess it just depends on the ritual. This 9-6 one, for example, kind of bites. I don't understand how people can breathe life into it, make it fresh, reinvent it. I don't understand how people can watch all their daylight hours slip by through a window (and btw, I don't even have a window) for 10 years and not realize that there are much better things out there to waste their time and energy on. And the thing is, I LIKE my job, so I can't even begin to understand the people who are putting up with this that don't. I guess I should admire their... stamina.
So what is ritual to me? Ritual is the Jedi mind trick of making some place old look new again. Ritual is revisiting myself every couple of years, watching younger and older versions of me spar and dance. Ritual is using the tools I've crafted over my lifetime to learn something new every day. Ritual can't be the same, it has to be different. However subtle the movement, it has to move.
... I think that's my subtle way of saying I need a vacation.
