Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Rituals


Every day, we engage in particular processes or actions under certain situations, whereby personally would see it as some form of ritual. Some of us may perceive the rituals as something meaningful, but what we may not notice is that, these so called rituals might not be as meaningful as we thought to be. For example, a person has been instilled with the concept of not wasting water usage by making sure he maximizes the uses of water. What he does is as simple as putting one hand in the running water while brushing teeth. It is his very own ritual to not wasting the water, but the truth is, he can just turn the water supply off while carrying out his daily hygiene care. There are other rituals such as saying particular something in order to console or cheer a person up. “I will always be by your side.” “Let’s go out and spend some time together.” Certainly, we may mean what we say, but, there are also the times when we say it for the sake of saying it, to help balancing the uncomfortable or reducing undesirable atmospheres. We can easily come up with our own rituals to deal with certain situations, but it is more difficult to determine whether they are as meaningful as we thought to be.