Rituals

Overview

Ritual: a repeated, always identical, regular procedure following a fixed order; a ceremony.

Rituals bring structure, routine and order into our lives — we keep to several identical sequences every single day. When everything runs as usual, we feel a sense of security, and being in control matters a great deal to most people. Rituals can be one way to get there.

The question

But rituals that were once carefully celebrated quickly turn into habits we perform almost automatically. That has advantages: we no longer have to think about the actions, so they cost less energy than unfamiliar ones. It also makes it easy to sink into daily rituals and lead a life guided through structure, as if in a trance.

So rituals may achieve the opposite of what we practise them for. Do they really offer us safety, or are we just holding on to an illusion? Do we put ourselves under too much pressure keeping them — and miss something more important?