Thursday, August 03, 2006

Rituals and Routine..


Rituals and routine didn’t impress me while I was young..Spontaenity… Variety..Adventure.. Different from the ordinary.... That used to be my mantra..

But now I feel different..Order… Doing a few things.. The..same way.. At the same time each day.. Sooths me..

Ringing the bell in my boy’s room .. lying on the bed.. as soon as I wake up every morning…. Daily morning walk, seeing the same scenery and the same smiling faces.. …Watching the NDTV news …all the four of us… chatting and joking as we have breakfast... Saying Rosary and a Psalm daily.. Laying down my steth.. cell… glasses and pen the same way, on my table before I start my work….. Having specific dishes on some specific days.. Lighting the candle before our family prayers at dusk.... Watching the night sky in solitude and silence every night..Pampering my body and face with bath and lotions before going to bed.. The familiar fragrance of camphor melting..as I slip off to sleep..

Simple pleasures of life.. But.. Ha..! So soothing.. So comforting.. I find all these things stabilizing me ..I find it binding and connecting our family in a beautiful manner....

No they are not just superficial things..

There is tremendous power and strength in rituals and routine...

PS. Thats my familiar scene every morning.. I walk along that road.. I start getting withdrawal symptoms if i miss it for a few days..!!
:))

16 comments:

Bhavesh said...

for me still the unknown is fun..

but i guess we all do have our routines and rituals dat mae us comforatble..

silverine said...

Routine is indeed very comforting I have noticed.
And I think it comforts because it means there is no disruption. And the family rosary is one of the most comforting of all routine. It puts me to sleep...:))
Lovely thoughts.

Ajith Prasad Balakrishnan said...

Routine, I agree..rituals I doubt..Not that I'm an atheist, but I'm too lazy to stick to any of those :)

starry said...

Beautiful post. Rituals and routines does have a comforting effect. It makes our life less complicated and makes it more simple. I enjoy the simple pleasures life has to give.

Anonymous said...

:)...

Everything about my daily life is routine...I sometimes feel I am being paranoid about it. But Yes once in a blue moon I say enough is enough and do something totally not me to take a break before comming back to my same ol Routines... I do crib about it but at the end of the day I like my life cause of the routines I follow...

PS: Your walk way is Gorgeous!! I shd send u a pic of my walk way next to the beach with Date Palms on both side..... ;)

Sarah said...

Awww..When i saw the photo, I remembered walking on the bund in Chengannur..looking for the uppa meen and frogs..hoping to spot water lilly flowers, pestering Kutten to get in to the river to get the flower for me....

Aashi said...

Anu!.iv added my baby's pic on my blog!sent u a mail too.

Scoot said...

powerful post and it's a totally different take on the routine life that most people say leads to monotony.
hey,why do you burn camphor at night?anything medicinal about it?

pophabhi said...

Such a small thing that we fail to notice many a times. Routines. They form the spine of our life. Very true - you got me thinking :)

mathew said...

lovely post!!

i still miss the daily morning tea I used to have at home some years back..
then i knew how powerful routines and rituals can be!!

Movie Mazaa said...

Theres indeed soemthing so refreshing about knowing that a few things just dont, wont change. Ironical though it may sound regularity does have an association with monotony.

Johnny said...

In some way rituals define our life. Recently I read in BMJ that an old women refused to go out of the hospital after being discharged. The nursing staff tried everthing to get her out of the bed, but to their dismay she didn't budge. Later they found out that they didn't removed a plaster from her hand, which was the last thing they did during her previous admissions. After the removal of the plaster, she went home happily.

Ekta said...

yess indeed..sometimes these rituals give us the comfort that things are still the same and havent changed much..coz most of us dread change!
So enjoy these little rituals while you can..

Rose said...

Not a great fan of Rituals and Routine.. I more or less live by the moment.. As I look back I see my life as a garland of stolen moments with my loved ones.. moments wich were not routine or planned.. A bare-footed walk in the rain licking onto a bar of ice cream.. Lying under a star-jewelled sky without a word being uttered.. Sleeping off on my mother's lap while she kept on scolding me..

But yes.. Cant deny the fact that there is some solace in familiarity..

:)

..Me

Suji said...

Nice post. How true that as we grow older we start to love the same routines and rituals we hated as children. U live in a really beautiful place...lucky u.

-Poison- said...

routines are safe. however sometimes i feel like the groove confines people to much..