Many people would say, in fact, that we have far too much ritual in our lives. Isn't life busy enough without having more plans to make; more occasions to celebrate? The idea of ritual might seem outmoded, even unnecessary, but many psychotherapists insist that, in order to lead balanced, healthy lives, we need much more ritual, not less. Rituals - and plenty of them - should be a central part of our lives.

I’m not talking about dispatching a bunch of flowers for Mother's Day, a card for Father's Day, or snatching a last-minute box of chocolates for Valentine's Day. For rituals to be healing and life-enhancing they have to be more than duty - they have to have meaning. We don't need more commercial trappings; we don't need bigger and better Christmases: we simply need more personalised ones. Do you find yourself following exactly the same pattern every year at, say, Christmas? Do you look forward to it or does its approach fill you with a sense of burden? Are your rituals too rigid? Have they stayed the same over the years despite obvious changes in the family's ages or beliefs? If a ritual doesn't work for you, you need to change it. Rituals should grow and evolve all the time.

An example might be reinventing a ritual to celebrate your anniversary. You might go out together or cook a special meal at home. You could give gifts which symbolize this last year you have spent together – something really thoughtful that has meaning. Then you might talk about what you both want for the next year of your life.

On a much smaller note, you might decide that you start every morning with a kiss and end every evening with a word that you want to symbolize the next day – even tiny things like this are rituals, and powerful ones.

RITUALS FOR HEALTH & HAPPINESS

Good rituals are essential to our emotional, psychological and spiritual health. They not only help us on a personal basis but, in a time where many of us live far from our family, where many of us don't even know our neighbours, rituals give us a small sense of community, a sense of who we are and where we fit in the scheme of life. Without rituals we drift...

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© Copyright Jane Alexander. This article was originally
published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in August
2001, as part of Soulful Living's "Personal Rituals" Issue.

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