7 Reasons You Should Ritualize Your Life
“Great things can be created by a series of small, seemingly insignificant elements brought together with intention and love.”
- adapted from quote by Vincent Van Gogh
I grew up in a small family. I don’t remember if we had any solid traditions except for turkey and cranberries at Thanksgiving, presents and a tree at Christmas, and hunting for plastic candy-filled eggs filled on Easter.
We went to church on Sundays, but we switched churches often. Sometimes we’d get on bikes and ride to Dairy Queen across town. Sometimes we’d take a summer or winter vacation, but not always every year. Everything seemed random, nothing was scheduled. I envied my friends with larger families, who seemed to have numerous events and built-in traditions that could be counted on. I thought maybe having relatives in the immediate area was the key to creating and keeping traditions. But, we didn’t have extended family living nearby, or even within a day’s drive.
When I was maybe 9 years old, my favorite book series was “The Boxcar Children.” This was a collection of stories surrounding the adventures of four orphaned siblings who lived in an abandoned train car in the forest. I was fascinated with how these kids could create a life even in isolation, and they seemed to have fun. The series was accompanied by a cookbook, “The Boxcar Children Cookbook,” a collection of recipes the children cooked in the books. One recipe, “Canoe Trip Pancakes,” stuck out to me in particular.
It was such an easy recipe, and adorably written (see recipe above, step #2: “until drops of water…dance on the surface”) so I started making “Canoe Trip Pancakes” on weekends. I loved every bit of the process. I felt like I was harnessing the self-sufficiency of my fictional friends and adding more meaning into my lazy weekend mornings. I might have even done my own dishes! I look back upon this time with happiness, remembering my small, but significant effort to bring my family together with food.
Everyone seemed to like the pancakes, or at the very least they tolerated my need to make them. Sometimes my dad would chime in with some bacon and eggs, and we’d make a hodgepodge brunch out of it, drenching our plates with maple and boysenberry syrup, and defrosting a new canister of orange juice from concentrate (anyone else have to drink that stuff as a kid?) to wash it all down. It made me really happy that my pancakes brought us all together as a family, albeit briefly.
Fast forward 30 years, and I have my own little family. Even though we are only 3, we are still a family bound together by love, responsibility, and obligation. But those aren’t the only elements that bind families together. Through my childhood experiences, and by observing the traditions of my friends’ families, I’ve come to understand that rituals are important for families to grow and thrive. I really want to make more use of traditions and rituals for myself and for my family.
The Importance of Little Rituals
What is a ritual?
Usually referred to as characteristics of a ceremony or religious life, rituals can be any sincere tradition that includes carefully ordered and well-intended actions.
Rituals are important because they are the glue that binds families together. The seemingly insignificant actions that make up rituals are given much more weight when combined with intention and love. In this way, rituals connect “the ordinary to the extraordinary,” making the mundane aspects of life more beautiful.
Is it too late to create new traditions?
Anytime is a great time to start creating rituals for yourself or for your family. I think that rituals might be especially important during long periods of waiting, such as what we’re experiencing now with the coronavirus.
7 Reasons Why You Should Ritualize Your Life
- Rituals give us something to look forward to. They also help to mark the days as they pass, creating an ongoing way to structure our precious days, weeks, months, and years.
- Rituals give us agency, and empower us to create our lives, instead of passively experiencing our lives. Rituals also reassure us that we’re on the right path, and they help us reflect on our journey, and self-correct if necessary.
- Creating rituals between friends and family is a great way to make memories.
- Rituals help with setting expectations, and the repetition of rituals gives us, especially children, a sense of security and belonging, in addition to managing our reactions to changes in time and season.
- Through repeated traditions and rituals just for us, we can increase our personal happiness, satisfaction, and sense of well-being. And, if we are personally happy, this happiness flows to others.
- Rituals and traditions aid in building a strong family culture, family identity, and family morale.
- Finally, rituals provide us with a sense of renewal. Taking time for a intentional tradition offers us a break from our everyday routine, habitual existence. I’ve heard rituals compared to oases: a figurative place to rest on our life journey.
What simple, repeatable acts of love do you already have in place for yourself, or for your family? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the results of adding rituals to you life, or your family life. Please leave a comment in the box below, or send me an email at ali.everthrive.org.
Thank you for spending a bit of your day with me!
With gratitude,
Ali
