Thoughts on Rituals
The value of rituals could be far more powerful, if we saw them as opportunities to learn, reflect, and build authentic community, rather than as obligations.
Holiday Dinners
I grew up Jewish. Perhaps one day I’ll share thoughts on religion (not quite there yet) but my thoughts on rituals came to the forefront as Passover kicked off last night. For the fourth year in a row, I did not attend a Passover Seder. Last year made sense, of course, as we were in the beginning months of a life altering pandemic and Seders are the opposite of social distancing. The ritual of Passover, along with other religious rituals, however, had lost meaning for me long before Covid came around.
As a child, I remember the ritual of Passover dinner (among other holiday gatherings) fondly. Family and friends would get together at someone’s house, catching up on the new school year, new seasons of television shows, life at work, plans for the future, and of course talking about how matzah makes everyone constipated. Connection with loved ones was the name of the game as the pre-dinner conversations led to a dinner of storytelling, traditional prayer, and light-hearted complaining about how salty my mother’s soup was. I remember these times and often smile.
Somewhere along the way for me, this ritual, like many others, seems to have departed from a connecting event I look forward to and enter a realm of obligation. Perhaps my memory is naïve. Perhaps it was always an obligation. As I got older, though, family holiday rituals, like Passover, have turned into forced events that generate anxiety, rather than enjoyment. Preparation was draining and stressful. I felt that excited anticipation was replaced by arguments.
Who was going to host? Who was (or wasn’t) going to be invited? How do we collaborate to make sure we get through dinner without someone getting pissed off or storming out? Yup, that shit actually needed to be discussed.
Today, I reflect on past Passovers as a representation of rituals as a whole in my life. Holidays are certainly a common form of ritual, as are birthdays, anniversaries, and other annual events. Interestingly, these kinds of rituals have completely evolved in my adult life as a result of their transformation from desired time of connection to forced obligated tradition. I’ve written about my birthday as an example of this transformation.
Breaking Down Rituals
Zooming out to the bigger picture of the process of how rituals in my life have evolved, I can see a pattern. The way these events were presented to me as a child were to be connecting occasions, held in tradition to ensure they would always happen. This made sense and in action, this is how it happened. My entire family would be excited about who we would see and get to spend time with. We would typically leave with a sense of fulfilment (as far as I knew).
Over time, however, the rituals became constricting. As a result of their forced nature, deciding on the details each year became more and more cumbersome. As people get older, the decision to evolve or not to evolve with the new times can determine how practicing rituals can evolve or not as well.
Sure, a ritual can occur on the same day every year but that doesn’t mean it needs to be practiced in the exact same way. The work done on ourselves outside of those rituals can be quite useful in informing what we may need from those rituals when they occur? Need to skip Christmas dinner this year because you’re dealing with a lot of anxiety in your relationship or at work? Why should that be an issue? Unfortunately, it is often the case that not partaking, or other shifts in the ritual’s practice can be very disruptive to the unconscious person or persons involved.
Rather than rituals being events that are put on a pedestal for the symbols of connection, joy, or unity that they can represent, they should be events that highlight the work we have been doing on ourselves to maintain the values most important to us. To avoid the peril of obligatory attendance and uniform practice, perhaps the freedom to bring (or not bring) one’s best self to these rituals is a worthy upgrade. If these events were truly connecting, they would be open invitation for the person who has evolved since the last one to bring the self that shows up (or not) on that day. This is how the ritual evolves over time.
This can be true for large scale holiday dinners or for individual rituals we hold. If I have a personal prayer or meditation ritual every day but did no other work to self reflect or cultivate self-awareness, my ritual would never evolve. I would likely come to the same prayer or meditation points every day. If this ritual would continue this way, it would become tedious and unfulfilling. I would not grow or learn from my ritual, rather simply have it for the performative action of saying (to myself or others) that I pray or meditate.
The same can be said for a ritualistic dinner, holiday, or gathering that happens less frequently. The event evolves as the people do. Don’t want to spend Christmas this year with Uncle Fred? Totally cool. Is Mom and Dad’s Thanksgiving dinner more than you feel you can handle this week while you’re dealing with a major challenge at work? It’s ok that you don’t go. Do you want to host Passover Seder this year in your new home instead of going to your sister’s house? It’s not a competition. Do what feels right for you.
There’s a lot to think about here as it pertains to the healthy practice of rituals being a reflection of our evolution as individuals. Perhaps it will help to break it down a bit.
As I see them, rituals have three key elements that make them rituals:
- Rituals are Traditional
- Rituals require Presence
- Rituals form Community
In breaking each of these elements down, the argument can be made that rituals are not so much meant to preserve connection to self and others as they are to serve as a point of reflection for our own evolution. In understanding and transforming these elements of rituals through deliberate effort, over time, we can gift ourselves these beautiful methods of marking our growth as individuals, partners, families, and cultures.
The Three Elements of Rituals
Tradition
The typical ritual we think about is generational. Traditions passed down over time by parents to their children. Some I have focused on so far show that we give significance towards events that carry on in memory throughout our history and the history of others who maintain the ritual.
In the context of religion or history, this makes a lot of sense. We celebrate Passover as a Jewish people to commemorate Moses and the freeing of slaves in Egypt. Those who practice Christianity, in its many forms, celebrate Christmas to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ. Americans celebrate Thanksgiving every year to commemorate some insane notion that pilgrims actually gave a shit about the Native Americans that were here when European colonists came to rape and pillage their land.
Whatever the reasons may be, it is clear that we have been partaking in these rituals for a long time.
Tradition, and its passing through history, can also take on the context of each day. A morning ritual can consist of a number of different activities. You can wake up, have a cup of coffee, get a workout in, shower, meditate, and journal each morning before work. If you do this each work day, it becomes a ritual. This ritualistic process can extend to any number of daily traditions that you keep for yourself. Not much unlike a holiday, except more frequent and more impactful to our lives.
What’s important about keeping tradition is that it serves us. Rituals must have value to us for us to want to keep them going over the course of our history. A daily ritual of going to the gym or journaling should have some positive effect on our physical or mental state for us to continue practicing them. In the same light, Thanksgiving should bring us closer to the friends and family we spend it with. In carrying on daily or annual (or whatever frequency) traditions like these serve us as individuals or to the people we pass them down to, over time.
Would you pass on a tradition that made you feel like shit to your kids? My guess is no. So then why continue to practice rituals that are not a reflection of the work you are doing to grow yourself as an adult? Each traditional even in our lives should be under constant review for the way in which it serves us. Do you leave the gym each day in pain or wishing you did more? Change the ritual. Do you leave Thanksgiving each year sad about how your parents hate each other and refuse to move on? Stop going!
You always have the power to change the tradition or ritual. This process, like any other, should be mindful and part of a greater purpose that serves your growing self.
Presence
A ritual also requires our presence and energy. This can be physical presence, like showing up for Christmas dinner and being there in person (or over Zoom) with family and friends. It can be spiritual presence in prayer or chanting as energy is put into something beyond the body, like meditation. Or it can be physical and spiritual presence, for instance a baptism or bar mitzvah where the body performs certain tasks within a spiritually meaningful context.
The point is that a person is bringing themselves and their energy to the ritual in such a way that makes it meaningful and worth continuing to do (for themselves or for future ritual practices).
One example of the presence we bring to a ritual and the energy it carries can be seen in the words we use to mark or complete the ritual. This is more obvious in rituals with prayer, chanting, or even expressed gratitude (think Thanksgiving or Christmas). It is a bit less obvious in the internal thoughts we bring to our personal rituals. Meditation mantras, personal affirmations, and self-compassion can all be ritualistic in their practices. Again, the key piece here is that we show up and the energy we bring constitutes valuable, self-serving speech, either out loud or in our heads.
As I have written about, true presence is not easy to bring to every situation. It does, however, become much easier to bring when the practice or ritual is enjoyable and seen as a productive use of energy. Consequently, rituals can suffer when presence is sacrificed. If a ritual becomes more of an obligation, we are far less likely to bring our presence to it because it does not meet the standard of well spent energy.
Think about it this way. Birthday parties are a common ritual but how present are you when you’re celebrating a friend’s child’s first birthday versus your best friend’s 40th? How many first birthday parties are spent with the attendees sitting around on their phones or wrapped up in some external occurrence (kids being kids or dogs running around). The ritual is somewhat diluted because we feel the obligation of simply showing up because we were invited.
On the other hand, for a close friend or someone who you’re celebrating that actually recognizes the significance of the birthday ritual, the energy shifts. Your presence is far easier to bring because there is meaning in the event, both for you as an accomplice to the reflection and celebration, as well as for whom the ritual is being held.
Community
Finally, rituals are intended to build community. This is somewhat of a product of the first two elements, tradition and presence. Think about it, the frequency and intensity in which you practice a ritual will likely bring you closer to the other people who share in practicing such a ritual. If you go to church every Sunday, you are likely to build community with fellow church goers. Similarly, if you go to the same spin class every morning, you may find community with the people who also go to that class.
These communities, much like I’ve discussed with tradition and presence, cannot be forced. Communities that come together through true ritual want to be together. They do not feel obligated to do so. No, the ritual brings the participants meaning and that meaning is amplified for each person by those who are bringing their presence to be a part of the group and event with them.
The challenge here is that the members and leaders of the community can get lazy. A congregation of a synagogue, where the majority of members show up only twice a year for the high holy holidays, call themselves community but aren’t really. This is the fault of the leaders of the congregation and the members. The leaders charge extra for attendance on those days and make no effort to build community during the rest of the year, turning off the members.
Along with the members, who only show up twice a year because they feel obligated to do so or else be smote by the lord almighty. Look, I understand that this is just how things work sometimes, particularly in common day religion, but it feels like there can be a better way. Rituals should bring people together out of the joy and desire that comes from participating. Certainly not for fear of what happens if you don’t participate.
Rituals That Matter
And that brings me to the main focus here, which is that rituals can be a beautiful and connecting practice for people. We bring our best selves and do it frequently, which inspires groups of people to partake in rituals together. This, in turn, makes keeping the value of those rituals outside of the rituals themselves more enjoyable and desirable. It is in this way that our presence is rewarded, the frequency and intensity become easy, and the community strengthens.
I have been saddened to see some of the rituals that I grew up enjoying turn into obligations. I have also come to reframe my own rituals into methods of growth and evolution. As I continue to trek my path of self-awareness and maturation in adulthood, I recognize that I can start my own rituals, join in on others, and find meaning in practicing the values that a ritual represents.
If you feel a connection and would like to understand more about how it all comes together through deliberate work, Please check out my site for coaching and self exploration programs at www.deliberateself.com
