0:02 The question isn't what ritual will make
0:04 you a better person. The question
0:06 [music] more so becomes what do you want
0:07 to remember? What do you want to
0:09 remember about yourself? What [music] do
0:16 Hello and [music] welcome to another
0:18 video. I'm going to try and keep this
0:20 intro short and sweet. Yes, I am nestled
0:22 between two white beds. This is the only
0:24 source of natural light that I have. And
0:25 a lot of the places that we've been
0:27 staying at, they kind of really [music]
0:30 try and bump up the bed to room ratio.
0:32 And sometimes there's two to three beds
0:34 per room and only two of us. Anyway, so
0:37 I'm here in between two beds and I want
0:39 to talk about rituals [music]
0:41 and New Year's resolutions. And when I
0:42 started writing this, I really thought
0:45 that I was going to talk more about
0:48 [music] New Year's resolutions. I
0:50 haven't engaged with them in a long
0:52 time. I realized that what I decided at
0:54 the beginning of the year that I wanted
0:55 to do by month three kind of felt
0:58 lackluster by month six sometimes felt
0:59 completely irrelevant but because I had
1:01 written them down I felt that need to
1:04 accomplish them but I wouldn't and then
1:06 the guilt and the shame and I know a
1:07 [music] lot of us relate to that and so
1:09 I thought that what I was going to offer
1:11 was that we could do things a little bit
1:13 differently and maybe include more
1:14 rituals in our life which I think
1:16 ultimately is what I'm trying to do with
1:18 this video. Uh but I think it became
1:21 more about how we experience time and
1:24 how resolution thinking can make our
1:26 experience of time and our experience of
1:28 life so vastly different. This of course
1:31 is mostly inspired by the fact that I've
1:33 been reading a lot of Bangchan and I
1:34 read the disappearance of rituals. So
1:36 I'll be quoting him a lot. I've also
1:38 been living in Japan where a lot of
1:40 people engage in a lot of rituals quite
1:42 often and it's just been very wonderful
1:45 to see and to reflect on how devoid my
1:48 life has been of ritual. So, let's get
1:50 into it. I know you know this feeling is
1:51 the feeling when you pick up your phone,
1:53 you probably want to check a message or
1:54 something and then you start scrolling
1:56 and then you look up and a whole hour
1:58 has passed by, sometimes two. It's
2:01 especially potent this feeling when you
2:04 do this in the late afternoon and
2:05 suddenly you realize that the whole
2:07 house is dark because the sun has gone
2:09 down and you haven't turned on all the
2:12 lamps. I hate that [laughter] feeling
2:14 and that is one very specific way of
2:17 experiencing time and a lot of us are
2:19 stuck here and it's what Biancan calls
2:22 serial perception. So serial perception
2:25 is extensive. It is one thing after the
2:27 other moving through an endless feed of
2:30 stimulation. And the thing about serial
2:32 perception is that it is incapable of
2:35 what Han calls lingering. The feeling of
2:37 actually being present with something
2:39 fully present and letting that kind of
2:42 sink in and settle in. Hideer also had a
2:43 word for this and he called it dwelling.
2:47 To dwell means to linger. To tarry, to
2:49 be somewhere, to really be there, not
2:51 just pass through. And I think that this
2:54 is the the way of experiencing time that
2:56 New Year's resolution kind of evokes,
2:59 which is one thing after the next, one
3:01 goal after the next. You're always
3:04 moving toward the next thing, towards
3:06 the next version of yourself without
3:09 ever lingering anywhere because there is
3:11 nowhere to linger because there is no
3:13 arriving anywhere. the sky is the limit [laughter]
3:14 [laughter]
3:16 and you're just in perpetual motion,
3:18 constant striving and endless becoming,
3:21 which sounds absolutely exhausting.
3:24 Symbolic perception is the opposite. It
3:26 is the ability of letting something mean
3:29 something over time to be able to come
3:31 back to this thing over and over again
3:33 and still find it resonant. And that's
3:35 what rituals do. They kind of pull you
3:38 out of serial time, out of that constant
3:40 like moving forward frantic way of
3:42 experiencing time and drop you into
3:46 symbolic time. Time that is not measured
3:48 by what you can accomplish or how
3:51 productive you can be or the things that
3:54 you will do that will benefit you in the
3:56 future. It is time that is measured by
3:59 what you attend to. And one thing that
4:02 Simone Vil, who I really love, um,
4:04 speaks about is sustained attention. And
4:07 she says that attention is the rarest
4:09 and purest form of generosity. To give
4:11 something your full attention, not
4:14 because it's useful and not because it's
4:16 productive, but simply because it's
4:18 there and because it matters. Rituals
4:21 are acts of attention. Full attention.
4:24 It kind of says like this thing is here
4:27 and that thing deserves my presence.
4:29 We're all kind of addicted to novelty.
4:30 We can see it in all the micro trends.
4:32 Uh you can see it in like the last, I
4:34 don't know, two decades of self-help
4:36 books. Like there's always one new
4:38 system, one new routine, one new way of
4:40 thinking that will finally unlock
4:42 everything for you and you'll finally
4:44 become your most authentic self. I think
4:45 it's become really helpful for me to
4:48 read different philosophers and it has
4:49 made me feel a lot more at peace. And
4:52 one thing that Kierard says is that only
4:55 the new of which one tires. One never
4:58 tires of the old. He says it's the new
5:01 that exhausts us. And that this
5:03 compulsion to constantly seeking
5:06 something new and something fresh that
5:09 gets us deeper into this empty routine.
5:12 And we think we're escaping routine by
5:14 constantly seeking out this new stimuli.
5:17 But that consumption then becomes the
5:19 routine. And rituals break this cycle,
5:22 this empty routine through repetition.
5:24 Because through repetition, you can
5:26 create intensity, deep intensity and
5:29 deep meaning. You can come back to the
5:32 same thing over and over and over again.
5:34 And that kind of accumulates over time.
5:36 It doesn't become less significant. It
5:39 becomes more significant. It it it
5:41 becomes more important in your life. One
5:43 small example that I can think of is
5:45 maybe having that first cup of tea or
5:47 that first cup of coffee on your own,
5:49 sitting down, maybe reading a book. I
5:50 don't tire of that. I don't tire of
5:52 waking up a little bit earlier than
5:54 everybody and pouring myself a cup of
5:56 tea and sitting down and reading for
6:00 like 20 or 30 minutes. That to me has
6:03 become such an important part of my day
6:05 and it's something that keeps on giving
6:07 and I think it gives more than what it
6:10 requires from me. Rituals can be a way
6:13 of creating duration in our life of
6:15 extending time and it can create pockets
6:18 of symbolic time in a world where like
6:22 very often it just really recognizes
6:25 serial time. When I was 19, I went all
6:27 the way to New Zealand to study marine
6:28 science at uni. And then my life totally
6:30 deviated from that and I ended up doing
6:32 nothing with marine science. And now I'm
6:34 32 and I'm doing a masters in
6:36 counseling. And they just couldn't be
6:37 more different from each other, which I
6:39 think it sums up a lot of people's
6:41 experience, but at least my own in which
6:43 I've just been [music] consistently
6:45 interested in so many different things.
6:47 And I can't necessarily go to university
6:49 for each interest and pursue it
6:51 academically, even though I would really
6:52 love to cuz I love learning. [music] And
6:55 I think that is one of the things that
6:57 I've always really appreciated about
7:00 Skillshare and I have found so immensely
7:01 valuable throughout the years. [music]
7:03 They are the sponsor of today's video.
7:05 They allow people to have multiple
7:07 interests and you can continue to feed
7:09 those curiosities without having to
7:10 invest a [music] whole lot of money or a
7:12 whole lot of time. Writing is one of the
7:13 things that I've been consistently
7:15 interested in throughout the years and
7:17 Skillshare has so many classes on
7:19 [music] creative writing. They also have
7:20 learning paths. So, they kind of create
7:22 a little curriculum for you, which I
7:25 find very useful. I like being told what
7:27 to do and then do it. And these classes
7:28 [music] are taught by other writers,
7:31 other very successful writers. One class
7:33 that I've enjoyed a lot that I've taken
7:37 multiple times is storytelling 101. I've
7:39 also really loved the Roxen Gay class,
7:41 [music] and they have also a very good
7:43 creative essay writing learning path.
7:44 So, if there's anything that you'd like
7:46 to learn, I would highly encourage you
7:49 to join Skillshare. The first 500 people
7:50 to click the link in the description box
7:53 below or to scan the QR code will get
7:55 one month free trial with Skillshare.
7:56 Plus, you can give Skillshare
7:58 memberships to friends and family. I
8:00 think it's the perfect [music] gift. So,
8:01 thank you so much to Skillshare for
8:04 sponsoring today's video. Making time
8:06 habitable. I think this is my favorite
8:08 concept around rituals, especially as a
8:11 very time anxious person. I wake up and
8:13 immediately I'm available. Notifications
8:15 rush through as soon as I put my phone
8:18 off, not disturb. And it feels really
8:21 like I've lost this feeling of being at
8:24 home in my own time. And Bianchol Han
8:26 writes, "Rituals are symbolic techniques
8:28 of making oneself at home in the world.
8:31 They render time habitable." Like time
8:33 is a place you're supposed to be able to
8:35 live in. Right now, it feels like we're
8:38 just moving through time and trying to
8:40 optimize our way through it, but we're
8:43 not actually inhabiting it. Rituals
8:46 create this time in which you don't have
8:48 to be performing and you don't have to
8:50 be producing anything. And I think
8:52 rituals have a very lovely way of of
8:55 fostering that feeling that you can just
8:57 you can just be. Another way rituals
8:58 make time habitable is by giving our
9:01 life a more predictable shape and pulse
9:04 like creating a container. They can
9:05 provide us with rhythmic markers and
9:07 offer both the comfort of rhythmic
9:09 regularity and the flexibility to adapt
9:12 to changing circumstances enabling us to
9:14 keep time and kind of stay in sync with
9:16 the pace of life. Because when time has
9:19 no internal structure, when there are no
9:22 transitions, no temporal landmarks, time
9:25 can become kind of overwhelming. It's
9:28 all available, but none of it feels like
9:30 it's really yours. Rituals can divide
9:33 time into meaningful units. It doesn't
9:36 give you more time necessarily, but it
9:38 makes time feel more livable.
9:40 Resolutions, however, are like you need
9:42 to become this new person. You need to
9:43 have this new body, and you need to
9:45 build this new habit and completely
9:48 overhaul your identity because because
9:50 who you are is not exactly enough. We
9:52 need to we need to level up. We need to
9:54 step it up. And there's always this gap
9:56 between where you are and who you are
9:58 and who you should be and where you
10:01 should be. And these resolutions are
10:03 meant to just bridge it. But rituals
10:06 instead, they they just they just kind
10:08 of remind you of the things that you
10:10 already know. We we really have lost
10:13 this capacity of remembering. And I
10:15 spoke about this in a previous video of
10:17 how we're losing our memory and how
10:19 journaling can really help with um
10:22 remembering the things that you already
10:24 know. But I think it has a lot to do
10:26 with how we experience time. And if
10:27 we're constantly experiencing time that
10:30 is extensive and is constantly moving us
10:31 forward, then it's really hard to
10:33 remember anything. So the world that we
10:36 live in right now is constantly making
10:38 you forget the things that you already
10:41 know. And Alan Deaton just puts it very
10:43 perfectly. He says, "Rituals make vivid
10:46 to us things we already know but are
10:48 likely to have forgotten." So rituals
10:50 don't teach you that you need to rest.
10:52 Like you know that you need you know
10:54 that you need to rest. They don't teach
10:57 you that like connection to uh community
10:59 is important. You already know that.
11:01 They just make things vivid again. They
11:04 make it real in your body, in your
11:06 day-to-day, in your actual lived
11:08 experience instead of just in your head
11:11 where it's like really easy to ignore.
11:14 Self-trcendence versus selfoptimization.
11:15 There's this cultural mandate that we're
11:17 currently living in which is the center
11:20 yourself. That's what we're told to do.
11:21 We need to find ourselves, express
11:24 ourselves, find our most authentic self.
11:25 And it's everywhere. It's in social
11:27 media. It's in therapy speak. It's part
11:31 of the whole self-help genre. And of
11:33 course, resolutions are the perfect
11:34 expression of this because they are
11:37 hyperindividualistic very often. Um, so
11:39 it's all about self-improvement and
11:41 self-disipline and becoming your best
11:44 self. And it's about monitoring your
11:46 progress and tracking your metrics. And
11:48 I spoke about this in a previous video
11:52 in which our kind of how we meet this
11:54 moment in which we are feeling a lack of
11:58 meaning in our life and are struggling
12:01 to find connections with ourselves and
12:04 the world around us is by finding
12:06 meaning through tracking our own
12:09 statistics. It's by tracking our steps
12:12 is by tracking like our weight, our
12:14 calories. Um, and you can see this a lot
12:17 through like New Year's resolutions tend
12:21 to be uh colored by like an obsession
12:25 with health um and an obsession with the
12:27 self and wanting to become the
12:28 healthiest version of yourself because
12:31 that's how you become, you know, morally
12:32 better than everybody else. And I think
12:34 there's a definite correlation between a
12:37 loss of meaning through how we consume
12:39 media and how we experience time and how
12:42 we become really obsessed with our
12:44 physical bodies and our physical health.
12:48 And this can be deeply isolating. Um, I
12:51 have found these goals that center
12:55 around myself usually to kind of detach
12:58 me from community, especially when I
13:01 have been really adamant about following
13:04 a specific kind of diet or adhering to a
13:06 specific kind of workout routine. It
13:09 kind of cuts me off from socializing and
13:11 it all just becomes this like private
13:14 project that only I can do. and if I
13:16 don't adhere to it, then I'm the person
13:19 to blame and it just like inevitably
13:21 fails. Rituals require something very
13:23 different. Han says that those who
13:26 devote themselves to rituals must ignore
13:28 themselves. Rituals produce a distance
13:30 from the self, a self-trcendence. When
13:32 you're in ritual, you don't have to be
13:34 constantly monitoring yourself or
13:36 analyzing yourself. You're just doing
13:38 the thing. You're just there and you're
13:40 not the center. The ritual is the
13:42 center. This creates what Han call calls
13:45 an embodied identity. Not an identity
13:47 that you construct through choices or
13:49 through personal brandings that you
13:52 curate and present, but more so it is an
13:54 identity that simply emerges from
13:56 repeated symbolic actions from what you
13:59 do over and over again and from the
14:02 patterns you enact in your body.
14:04 Resolutions try to construct identity
14:07 from the outside in, whereas rituals
14:09 construct them from the inside out. So
14:11 with resolutions, it's like if I do
14:12 these things, then I'll become this. But
14:15 with rituals, it's if I repeatedly do
14:18 this with presence, an identity will
14:20 emerge and it's an identity that I
14:22 didn't have to construct. It just is.
14:25 Self focus can make you miserable. And
14:27 it's not necessarily because you're
14:29 being selfish. I think there are many
14:32 times in which selfishness is required
14:34 to show yourself some respect, to
14:36 instill some healthy boundaries, to put
14:38 yourself first. Sometimes you do have to
14:41 put yourself first. Um, but I just think
14:43 that the self is such a small container
14:46 for a meaningful life. Um, so when
14:48 everything is about you and everything
14:49 is about your journey and your
14:51 accomplishments, you can just start to
14:52 collapse inward cuz it's not
14:55 sustainable. We we think that we need to
14:57 just like consistently work on ourselves
14:59 and that the problem is that we're not
15:01 doing enough work. The problem is that
15:04 there there's no limit to how much work
15:06 you can do on yourself. again part of
15:09 living in a neoliberal capitalistic
15:11 hellscape. But sometimes what we
15:12 actually need to do is kind of forget
15:15 ourselves and not in like a ego death
15:18 kind of way or like dissolve yourself
15:21 kind of way, but just enough to
15:23 participate in something that is a bit
15:25 larger than ourselves. And just like
15:27 enough to let the ritual hold you, to
15:30 let the ritual provide the space for you
15:33 to again, as we said, linger and dwell
15:37 and maybe just feel at ease. How we
15:39 experience time can shape what we
15:42 remember. And what we remember can shape
15:44 who we are. So serial time, that
15:46 extensive time, the scroll and forget,
15:49 the perpetually moving forward time,
15:52 that doesn't stick. It doesn't
15:55 accumulate. You can spend a whole life
15:58 just consuming and come out the other
16:00 side with really nothing much to hold on
16:03 to. Symbolic time is different. It
16:06 builds. It compounds. It makes the same
16:08 thing feel deeper and more significant
16:10 and more meaningful. It's maybe the same
16:12 walk you take every morning at the same
16:15 time. It's maybe the same cafe that you
16:16 go to when you sit down and you read
16:18 your book. You don't need elaborate
16:20 rituals. I mean, you can if you want.
16:22 You can do whatever you want. Uh, but it
16:24 can be as simple as, you know, having
16:26 the same group of friends over once a
16:30 month for a dinner that you host. Or it
16:33 can be, I don't know, baking a cake
16:36 every Sunday morning. It can be going to
16:39 the same park bench and sitting there
16:42 for an hour to read or just sitting
16:45 there in silence. Um, it's it's about
16:48 just creating that consistency and that
16:50 repetition. And it has nothing to do
16:52 with efficiency. It has nothing to do
16:54 with productivity. It has nothing to do
16:56 with what these things will bring for
16:58 you. It's just doing it because it
17:01 matters because it makes your body
17:03 remember. If you're baking something, it
17:06 makes your hands remember. The smell
17:08 fills the house and you remember that it
17:12 it feels like time becomes home again.
17:15 The question isn't what ritual will make
17:17 you a better person. The question more
17:19 so becomes, what do you want to
17:21 remember? What do you want to remember
17:22 about yourself? What do you want to
17:24 remember about your life? What do you
17:26 want time to feel like when you look
17:28 back? Because I think for a lot of us,
17:30 we feel like time is kind of slipping
17:32 from our fingers. It's evaporating and
17:35 we never have enough time. But rituals
17:37 make time solid again. They make time
17:40 habitable. And you can build a life that
17:42 you know doesn't just pass through you,
17:44 but that you're actually living, that
17:45 you actually remember, that your body
17:49 remembers, that you hold in your memory.
17:50 And I think I'll end this video just by
17:51 saying that you already know what
17:53 matters. You always have. You've always
17:55 known. We just need to stop pretending
17:57 that we don't know. Okay. Thank you so
17:59 much for watching. I hope you have a
18:02 lovely rest of the year. I hope you take
18:05 it easy on yourself. And I hope that you
18:08 have a lot of space to rest. maybe read.
18:11 I send you lots of love and many hugs.
