Hey. An extremely short note on ritual and its role in the current madness.
Formal rituals that are long on form and short on meaning have never had much appeal to me.
Personal rituals, however, are another story.
Personal rituals are about intention and noticing. You *intend* to spend 10 minutes sitting still, doing nothing but noticing stuff; sounds, breaths, thoughts themselves.
They're different from routines, which happen more or less on autopilot. You get up, shower, start your day of other routines. There's not much intention and there's not much noticing, typically.
Matcha is of course the ultimate 900-year-old ritual, but it became so choreographed over the centuries that most of the intention and noticing -- not to mention fun -- went away.
Seems so much better to simplify it, in any way you choose. In the end it's just boiling water, sieving matcha, frothing matcha, and sipping matcha. There's a lot to notice in each of those if you can manage to not get lost in thought as you do it.
It doesn't have to be matcha, of course -- it could be the preparation of any food or drink, or it could be singing with your child, a few minutes of stretching, even cleaning the stove.
You can imbue meaning and intention and noticing to literally anything.
We've all got a little more time these days, don't we? We could create new rituals, together.
Would love to hear about yours.
