Ruts, Routines, and Rituals

From Menletter January 2003

By Tim Baehr

I was standing in the bathroom one morning, noticing how I get ready for my day. Shower. Shave. Brush teeth. Go downstairs. Make coffee. Make oatmeal. Open paper to comics section. Eat and read. Do crossword. Clean up. Within each of these events was a series of actions that rarely varies from day to day.

Now the question: Is my typical morning a ritual, a routine, or a rut? What's the difference, if any?

If I thought I was in a rut, I'd probably be unhappy. But I like my morning activity; I find it comforting, even calming. It's a way to ease into the day before I hit the commute to work. I could get up later, rush through things, not bother with the crossword puzzle, and so on, and have the benefit of more sleep. But I don't -- and won't.

It's not exactly a ritual, either. Most of the time, I'm on automatic pilot (except for the morning when I started thinking about this essay).

So I've concluded it's a routine.

This all got me to thinking about other repeating events in people's lives, including mine. What about Friday night dinner with the neighbors? What about my spiritual life? What's routine? What's ritual? What's got me in a rut?

Oh...I forgot about ritual. Ritual, as I see it, is some event that is done with intention. The event may be singluar or repeated, and it may follow a set pattern or be improvised to one degree or another. But the important ingredient is conscious awareness of the collection of acts -- their sequence, their meaning, their consequences.

We've all taken part in rituals: religious services, graduations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, men's retreats. And I think we've all seen certain repeated rituals devolve into routines and sometimes into ruts. Even your daily meditation and/or prayer can fall into a rut.

Here's an idea: Take inventory of the things you do regularly. Classify them into rituals, routines, and ruts. Try to identify the meaningful things that have become routine, the routine things that have fallen into ruts, and perhaps even the rituals that have taken a short-cut into a rut without even becoming routine. Now decide whether, and how, you want to change things. (One trick from the lifestyle gurus: consciously break the patterns. Have dessert first. Eat steak for breakfast. Take a different route to work. I think this can be a bit gimmicky, but do whatever works.) My way? I just try to pause a moment, take a few deep breaths, and become more mindful of what I'm doing.

The inventory and assessment is a good way to freshen things up, to allow you to live more consciously and feel more alive. It's worth doing every once in a while; it could even become routine!