There’s a certain satisfaction to be found in doing the same thing, day after day after day. The power of ritual can establish a rhythm as reliable as the turning of the seasons, even as it gets us ready for change.
Can you smell it in the air? A promise of regrowth and renewal beckons us forward. Spring is here, and much like the cycles of the seasons give us comfort, they also remind us how change is an integral, inescapable rule of existence.
There is definitely comfort to be had in cycles of habit and personal rituals. Scanning the news daily every morning is one of mine, always with a cup of coffee of course.
Scribbling down ideas, narrative hooks and angles is another habit of mine, as I stitch together and create structure and coherence out of the chaos of ideas. This gets the creative juices flowing and can even lead to an “Aha!” change moment of realisation.
I have a big blackboard painted square on my kitchen wall, and often scribble ideas on it in the morning with a coffee or in the evening with a glass of wine.
But returning to my news ritual, I find regularly monitoring local and global trends has become an automatic reflex for me. It reminds of my days as a journalist when I didn’t just scan the news but also covered and reported on it. Do structure and patterns of behaviour give us comfort, coherence and a platform to progress? I think so.
When my daughter was still a toddler in her pram we used to go to Emmarentia dam every second Saturday morning to walk around the park and feed the ducks. I used to save any stale bread from the week and she would squeal with delight as the ducks came around flapping and jostling for their ration of bread. Creating rituals for children (and their parents) give both a sense of rhythm and comfort.
French toast was another ritual for breakfast and my daughter would laugh as I flipped the toast into the air once one side was done. Even now she is a teen I still get an enthusiastic response when I suggest French toast for breakfast.
In the workplace, structure gives focus, which creates progress and timeous results so you can move onto the next project. When I was a journalist we had a cartoon up on the wall in the newsroom which depicted a man with a blindfold against the wall and his colleague/editor pointing a pistol at his head saying, ”Sorry Carruthers but after all, a deadline IS a Deadline”.
Deadlines are important but so is creating a quality end result. I thrive on variety and write articles across a range of topics from Finance, healthcare, IT, politics, innovations and lifestyle so I am constantly learning something new and hopefully combining routine and change together to be focused but also stay inspired and engaged.
Habits and rituals can be the wheels that spin wheat into gold and tools we can use to harness time and space and find fulfilment through making something new, or if not totally new, then novel enough to stand out, to engage and hopefully inform and entertain at the same time.
All of a sudden, I remember another personal ritual from when I was a schoolboy and later a student at university. What tools do we wield and habits cultivate to cope with the dreaded exam time? Need to remember the great lakes of Canada, for example? How about a handy acronym as a mental marker? H-O-M-E-S transcribes into Lake Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and finally Superior.
Another ritual memory is after studying for the evening I would visualise putting all the information into a large chest, locking the chest with a silver key and then placing the key safely in my pocket for the next day. Was it effective?
I think so, not that any records were broken or anything come results time. One thing resonates for sure though. I know I felt comfort as the next morning I visualised the key back in my hand in the great hall, ready to unlock my toolbox as the exam paper was set on the desk before me.
At work or play, routines and rituals can give us comfort but can also block us from evolving and progressing. If we follow our best instincts we know when a routine no longer serves us and the time for change is here, much like spring announcing a new season.
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