Routines and Rituals
Routines and Rituals August 2003
Most of my life revolves around my routines. When I use the word “routine” I mean the activities I’m obligated to perform to meet my basic human life needs.
These days the central routine in my life is work. I trade much of my time for money so I’m able to pay for my basic human needs of food, housing, transportation, and healthcare, and my modern human needs of electricity, natural gas, telephone, cable, and internet.
The most basic needs have been the same for humans for thousands and millions of years. Much human time and energy has been spent developing a routine to meet basic needs. I spend a lot of time at work and I have a lot of work routines, regular chores that need to be done at work, day-to-day and week-to-week.
The time that I’m not at work still revolves around my work routine. My sleep routine is based on my work routine. I’m lucky to be able to work during the day and sleep at night. I’m also lucky to be able to work on weekdays and have my weekends off from work. My weekends are, however, connected to my workweek. Most of the time when I’m not working I have other routines that I’m obligated to perform to meet my basic human needs. There are many chores that I need to do at home, after work and on the weekends.
Like most people, I have developed a routine that helps me perform all the tasks needed to stay alive. After all my obligatory work routines and home chores, I’m not left with much free time to call my own. I do admit that my routine helps keep me grounded. There is much about my routine that I love, enjoy, and am grateful for, but there is also much about my routine I dislike and perform only out of obligation. I look forward to being engaged in some of my routines. Many of my routines I mindlessly perform. I am unaware of what I’m doing because I’ve done it for so long that it has become automatic. I lose awareness of what I am doing. Sometimes that mindlessness is rather pleasant. There are other times when I can be very mindful of what I am doing, even in the simplest of chores, losing myself in the moment. For the most part, life seems to be a lot of work just to stay alive. Life is mostly work with very little time to play.
Throughout history, all cultures have developed their own unique routines, with various work identities and social roles. Using the little time remaining from the work routine, cultures have created what can be called rituals. Rituals have traditionally involved special ceremonies performed at special times and places. Rituals have been performed to enhance life, to celebrate life, to add understanding and meaning to life, and to bring blessings and luck upon individuals and cultures. Whereas routines are daily, rituals are more rare. Most cultures have their own routine for following a set of rituals. In many cases, rituals themselves have been turned into routines, obligations to perform. Rituals have the possibility of holding an extra-special power and meaning that transcends our normal mundane routines. In our modern world, most cultural rituals have lost their meaning and their ability to breathe new life into a world full of routines. Many modern traditional rituals are performed mindlessly without adding new life to our beings and our doings. Most rituals do not wake us up anymore. They do not help us feel more alive.
Although our routines fulfill our basic human needs, I believe it is rituals that keep us fully alive. I believe routines can sometimes have a way of killing our spirit. In these modern times, it is up to each of us to create our own rituals. Culture can no longer help us; it seems to be invested in itself, in keeping us all enslaved to our work routines, keeping our spirits asleep and deadened. Routines are inevitable. Rituals need to be created. Rituals are acts of creativity that unlock the creative spirit within us. Ritual and play are sometimes very closely related and sometimes are the same act of being creative. Rituals are the qualities we add to our lives to counterbalance the large quantity of routines we are obligated to perform. A small amount of quality can counterbalance a very large quantity.
Perhaps the best way for me to explain the types of rituals I’m talking about would be to give a few examples of what I do to feel awake and alive.
I go for walks regularly, almost daily, alone, with my wife, with my dog, or with a friend. I walk in the city, but I prefer to walk in nature.
For years and years, I’ve photographed nature as a ritual to help me be more aware of its intricacies.
Several times a day I look at the sky in a ritualistic way. I look to see what I can see. What color is the sky? Are there clouds? Where is the sun and the moon? Where are the stars?
For the past ten years my son Ezra and I have sat in whirlpool hot tubs, talking about life’s mysteries.
I read regularly, almost daily, to expand my knowledge and for pleasure.
I listen to music almost every day. Music helps me feel the full range of my emotions, just as nature helps me fully use all my senses.
I sometimes move my body in ways that make no useful sense; sometimes I even dance. Just the other day, I spontaneously jumped naked into a mountain stream.
When my grandmother was alive and we visited, we always played a card game called Pitch. When I visit my parents or in-laws, we play the card game 500 in a ritualistic way.
In the past year, I have been regularly meditating between twenty and forty minutes in my hut in the backyard.
For the past six years, I have traveled out west once or twice each year.
These are just a few of the rituals I have discovered that add meaning, joy, happiness, playfulness, creativity, connection, awareness, and aliveness into my life. These activities and ways of being counterbalance my routines. As I practice my rituals, I find them spilling over into my routines. More and more, I am discovering pleasure, joy, and playfulness in my routine activities. Perhaps, if I keep practicing my rituals regularly, maybe work and play will no longer be separated from each other. Perhaps, my obligatory routines will become one with my freely chosen ritua