The earth herself shows us just how much time and its layers can shape, move, break, everything. And yet even that points to the importance of ritual: without the ritual of farming, we wouldn’t have food. Without the ritual of land husbandry, we wouldn’t have healthy top soil. 

Rituals can be defined here as a repeated action for a desired outcome. 

Some of our more spiritually-minded friends may find it easy to connect with such an idea, the term itself can often be tied to the realm of the mystical. But that’s just one use for the word. 

You can have a coffee ritual. You can have a self-care ritual. Heck, you could have a gym ritual! 

Anything that you do in a consistent, repeated fashion with the goal of a specific outcome aligns with the idea of ritual (for our purposes). And often, these seem to come and go in layers or striations. 

One ritual can easily build upon another to bolster or tame it. For example, I used to have a ritual of brushing my teeth and then putting on my retainers, because I wanted to produce a straighter smile for myself. Well, now my ritual doesn’t require the retainers, so it’s shifted. 

Perhaps for a parent, you may have had the ritual of diaper changing, with the goal of eventually teaching your child how to use the bathroom on their own. I’m guessing those rituals only lasted as long as they absolutely had to before they were abandoned, ready to be built upon. 

We are like trees in this fashion, we show our age through our striations. I can remember something called a VCR—getting the timing down just right so I could rewind just to the point where the trailers ended is a skill that I’m still proud of—so that’s part of my striations, but there are already generations where such terminology is lost. 

For the month of September, while the world around us spins in time to back-to-school season, I’m hoping we think about our lives in terms of the rituals we use to push them forward, and the striations we use to mark the passage of life chunks. 

In our memoir or journal prompt, we’ll explore the connection between rituals and striations, and in fiction, we’ll consider how a character’s rituals can be an indicator of their identify. But for now, please start to simply observe the ways in which you find yourself participating in rituals. 

Perhaps you have a certain set of actions that you consistently perform at the end of the work day. Perhaps you have to put your cream in your coffee cup before you pour in the coffee. Whatever your rituals are, I find that simple awareness tends to make them more prevalent. 

Take mental note of your rituals, and then consider the reasoning behind them. Do you pour your coffee the way you do because of someone like a parent giving you that example? Maybe you perform certain actions at the end of your work day because it helps tell your brain that it’s done with work. 

Whatever your rituals, approach the idea with kindness. Perhaps it’ll be easier to identify the layers with which you’ve built your rituals if you’re not focused on the value of the rituals, but rather, simply, their presence. 

That’s all for now, friends. Looking forward to talking soon.