The wonderful power of everyday rituals
After the intervention we ate french fries. On a motorway service area. Of course, my daughter was hungry because she had not eaten all morning. Even on her birthday cake, which had traditionally been for breakfast, she had to give up. Immediately after getting up, we drove to the appointment in the outpatient clinic that Pro Familia had recommended us.
To bridge the waiting time, we walked along a tarred road in the commercial area. Later we went in, and then I sat in the waiting room until I was called. "It's so nice you did not leave me alone," my daughter said, fresh from anesthesia. I still remember exactly which nightgown she wore. I keep it until today and also the pink socks. It was her 16th birthday.
Today I know that this day, when her life changed so radically for the second time in a short while, we could have done otherwise than with a succinct stop on the highway and a subsequent birthday party, where the subject was carefully avoided. Maybe with candles, flowers, with moments of pause. We could have made it to my daughter's wish, if we had the tools to do it. But we had no idea, were intimidated by the importance of the hours in which their unplanned pregnancy, which we had laboriously accepted, but ended unexpectedly with a miscarriage. We sensed that something more profound had happened, but we were unable to express it.
"I felt the need for some kind of farewell."
Birthday parties and weddings, confirmation and communion, school enrollment and farewell to kindergarten, we knew all that. But in this very emotional, profound, liberating and for us both connecting experience we were alone, without a frame. Without a fitting ritual.
The Munich religion teacher Lore Galitz was better prepared in a similar situation. She had dealt with shamanic teachings and was therefore open to the unfathomable things between heaven and earth. And so, after a miscarriage, she came up with the idea of making a farewell ritual for her daughter - she was sure it was one - to commit. "I had first asked the doctor to show me what she got out of me," says Lore Galitz 13 years later.
But then the anesthetic confusion thwarted her. "I can not even remember, although the doctor assured me that she showed it to me and also talked to me for a long time," she says. Back at home, the teacher was still missing something. "I just felt the need for some kind of farewell," she says. Finally she got the idea: She bought two apricot-colored roses, one for herself and one for her husband. Together they went to a bridge. Each of them said his own farewell words to the unborn daughter and then threw the rose into the river. The current carried her away slowly.
The idea of a status quo is a soothing illusion.
"After that I felt calmer," Lore Galitz still knows. "There was peace in me again." Encouraged by this experience, the teacher, who later also did a Feng Shui training, began to develop more and more rituals for herself and eventually for others. In the meantime she has written the book "Time for Rituals - Impetus for a fulfilled life".
"Divorce hurts," the vernacular has always known. But it's not just about divorcing other people, but also situations, states, and the present, which is already a thing of the past. Basically, of ourselves. Because we change every day, every hour, every minute.
Again and again, cells die off, new ones develop, even in the brain, 1400 new nerve cells grow every day, as science only proved in 2013. But the constant change is also scary. She scares. We want to stay young. Stay in love. Stay happy. Preferably immortal.
The idea of a status quo is a soothing illusion that we need and love. It gives us the feeling of control: nothing unforeseen can happen, especially nothing undesirable. The need to have everything under control, we support with self-designed everyday rituals.
With little habits like the first cup of tea after a shower, the white wine with friends after work at the Italian restaurant around the corner. The tradition of getting bread rolls every Sunday morning and having breakfast in bed with husband and newspaper.
Repetition provides security, provides support and allows us to better withstand the waves of life that otherwise spill over us. "That everything stays as it is" is not for nothing one of our dearest wishes.A pleasant feeling comes when we stand in the kitchen every morning and watch the coffee bubble out of the machine. The day before yesterday is today. No news is good news.
Even in a crisis, rituals can help.
With the help of such small rituals, in the midst of rapid changes, we can pause briefly, reflect, and consciously perceive what is. We enjoy that everything goes according to plan. But there are also situations where control fails. When one separates. Ill get sick. Or lose the job. Or just with a miscarriage.
While it is easy to create beautiful contemplative rituals and to celebrate good moments, you are overwhelmed in a crisis. Few of us have any experience of how to support themselves in painful, critical moments. But you can do it yourself. Try something new.
Of course, something like that feels very strange and strange or silly: sitting down on a carpet or a blanket, for example. And to light a fat candle that stands for your own inner light. And then, for all the positive and energizing things in his life, to light more tealights and circle them around so that you feel surrounded by the good in a phase of fear or weakness.
If you look closely, you will feel more clearly. But also process faster.
To celebrate a ritual in difficult situations requires courage. Because it does not stun, but makes conscious. If you look closely, you will feel more clearly. But also process faster. By approaching what threatens to throw us off course, we gain some power over it. This has even been proven by a scientific study.
Two Harvard Business School researchers, Michael Norton and Francesca Gino, examined people's response to losses. 247 people should report the death of a loved one or the end of a love relationship. The researchers also asked whether any kind of ritual was used after these experiences, even if certain places were shunned or certain items of clothing were no longer worn.
The result: All respondents who could report a ritual had processed the loss better. A symbolic act makes the circumstances more bearable, because it partially restores "a sense of control," according to the researchers. But scientists also found out that rituals can not only comfort, but enhance feelings of happiness.
For example, Kathleen Vohs of the Carlson School of Management often at the University of Minnesota sent hundreds of volunteers to eat chocolate. She found out that those subjects who were instructed to break them first in half and then, in turn, could enjoy the first half in single bars, eating up the candy more.
Look instead of looking away, feel instead of displace.
Although they are as harmless as chocolate, rituals obviously have the potential to intensify sensations. Look instead of looking away, feel instead of displace. Of course, we can also cultivate such a way of dealing with life when it comes to not just percepting the everyday change, but solemnly celebrating it.
Simply to create more awareness, to stop more often. There are enough "harmless" occasions: travel. Move. A new job. The children are moving out. The menopause is here. Or simply the seasons that make you change. Some especially. The autumn. Christmas. New Year's Eve. Not only a year goes by, the old aunt died, the brother does not come home on Christmas Eve, and the mother can not bake the good cookies because she forgot the recipe because of her Alzheimer's disease.
But also: The daughter brings her friend for the first time, the son now decorates the tree. In many families, beloved rituals are used anyway in the Christmas days. And maybe all family members would like to try a new one. If only that everyone lights a candle on the tree on Christmas Eve and formulates a wish for himself or someone else.
Maybe we can give orders to our subconscious that it then fulfills.
The fear of the unknown can be banished more easily by our wishes and visions. And maybe we can really give our subconscious orders that it will then fulfill. Just as Lore Galitz and her husband left room to bid farewell to their unborn child by letting the roses float away.
The first truly peaceful and fulfilling New Year's Eve of my life I experienced in 2012. I can say that I have tried out all possible variants of a New Year's Eve party before. Alone, with friends, with work. In the mountains, at parties, at festive meals. In luxury, in the pub around the corner. But there was always a void, the event passed over me, I just was not really involved.
It was totally different last year, though it was outwardly unspectacular, even a bit embarrassing.Even before the exciting turn of the year at midnight, we were busy at a party with Lore Galitz with the new, which in 2013 will come to us. We wrote on paper what we would like to get rid of and then solemnly burned it in a circle around a fire. Everyone has said loudly his name and "I want to get rid of the old and welcome new things". After that everyone has created his own collage for the new year.
From magazines we cut out letters, words and pictures and stuck them on a cardboard. We felt a bit like being in kindergarten, but just as safe. For the first time, I had the satisfying feeling that I was looking ahead and appropriating my own time in a way. And I felt a creative power in my own life, which I had missed until then. The usual New Year's and New Year's sadness remained off. Wherever I celebrate this year, I will burn my note again. And when it's in the flower pot on the balcony.
