Ritual and Routine

And then there is another thing about Thoreau’s walking. He writes “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from all world engagements.” For Thoreau, this sauntering is not routine but ritual. He does not walk today because he has walked yesterday: he walks today because he must or his life would be amiss. For many years I ran long distances. Every day regardless of the season or weather conditions, I looked forward to donning my appropriate running gear and lacing up my running shoes. I kept two pair at the time in case one set became water-logged from the previous day’s rainstorm. I regularly anticipated heading out on the various trails and streets and leaving behind conflict and worry. I am in this sense reminded of Ishmael’s acknowledgement that when he is down with what he refers to as his “hypos” he heads out to sea to cure them. As for Thoreau’s saunterings, my running was a spiritual and therefore ritual experience as much as it was a simple physical activity. Running gave me time and space to think and to understand something about my life in my family, my study and my classrooms. Ritual is about engagement. Spinoza says that adequate ideas are the understanding of how things are and how they could be no other way. This understanding served often as the content of my runs and was agenda of Thoreau’s sauntering. Of course, we never do achieve complete understanding but the effort to attain it is emancipating, and there is always the next day’s run which I could anticipate. We engage in ritual as the practice of our daily lives, and we engage in rituals as if we are summoned. Dylan writes that sometimes he turns around and there is someone there; but at times there was only him and he is alone! Running was ritual and it brought me closer to my life. Rituals are our activities based in our adequate ideas. Ritual is connection, an active relationship with others and with the world. Ritual is also the active responses to the demands of the world that is always filled with Others. I am myself an Other. When I engage in ritual I can be immediately present though I am often distracted. In the participation of ritual, we achieve freedom as we choose willfully to participate in the world.

But lately I have been troubled when I consider that my walks and my yoga practice have become routine and burdensome. I engage in them because the practices have become unchanging, tedious, humdrum, more obsessive habits than extraordinary participation, more ordinary than exceptional. I am in them
not so much called as driven. Routine is engagement in the world without understanding. Routine walks on the treadmill and there is no relief from the monotony of it; routine is not to saunter. Routine is to do today because it was done yesterday and the day before yesterday. It is not choice but compulsion. Routine is to engage tomorrow because I engaged today: it is gratuitous activity. Routine is unconscious engagement.