The alarm sounds and the ritual begins. Bathroom, email, shower, dressing and deciding that what you thought was good just does not cut it. Keys, id, coat, hat and out the door only to wait for the elevator. Down the stairs to the subway, swiping the fare card twice, through the gate down the stairs and wait. Lean over the edge waiting for the next train. Eye the phone, while trying to read a book. Training coming into the station, stand aside or push in find a seat or left standing. Eyes averted.
Riding. Getting a seat…one station before you get off. Your stop get out and up the stairs, down the street and work. You shut off your joy. You plug in the required programing.
The work was supposed to end at 5 and it is 7, the way it is most days and you go out the door to the train. Not a busy as at 5 but not moving. Take a walk to another train, swipe the fare card. Down the stairs and stand and wait, leaning over the edge to see if perchance the countdown clock is wrong…it doesn’t seem to be.
Push and shove to get on, why can’t they just step out or step in.
Home and you forgot the milk. Open the door, sit and eat, oh, that’s right it is your turn to cook. Watch television, check the email, get ready for bed and lay out your clothes so it isn’t so hard to get ready in the morning. Go to bed, and you can’t sleep. So what else is new. The ritual ends.
And you wake up as the alarm sounds…..
What most of us call habit is really a ritual that gets us through one day to the next. We know what steps we need to take. With little variation we take the same steps day after day. Sure we complain and try to make changes but there is something comfortable about the sameness.
Ritual can and should be a place where we find our center and it is in finding that center that we are able to break the patterns that surround us, the patterns of monotony and blindness that numb us to possibilities and destroy our personal integrity.
Our society has schooled us to believe that we should have a job that we leave to retire and then to complete the ritual, die. Working together within our strengths and weakness, collaborating to build healing and healthful work places, we can change the ritual, the habitual pattern, and build a city and state and world that dream dreams and see visions that light up our darknesses .
The alarm is sounding where will you go?
