Zinzy Waleson Geene

I love a ritual. The word alone ladens the room in my head with the sultry air I expect from a monastery. It gives me Caravaggesque sunlight, high contrast, beaming its way to a church floor, illuminating austere dust particles on the way there. You can take the Catholic child out of the heartland, but… It’s safe to say the word “ritual” is single-handedly responsible for 70 per cent of my Etsy rosary purchases.

In a much more realistic sense, I’ve long felt disappointment about some of the rituals that have actually established themselves to be a part of my life. The way I mindlessly cycle through the same three news publications when I’m bored, even when I proudly claim to not be interested in the news at all. The way I stop eating breakfast if I’m stressed about work. The way I perpetually alternate how and where I write and take care of my responsibilities. How I struggle to indulge in hobbies that go beyond “working on my personal site”, which, really, is just work without the consequences.

Beyond fantasies of the monastic life I’ll never lead, the word “ritual” takes on a very psychological nature, likening itself to “compulsion”. What I like is that the distinction between the two, outside of the psychology domain, is the word “intent”. Intent is a magical thing, at least to me. It requires a comfort with seeing what is and acting in a way that aligns with what we hope will make the world a better place, in ways big or small.

Intent and I aren’t quick friends. Subconsciously, I favor a life on autopilot, one that doesn’t require that I register thoughts, feelings, bodily realities. As young Zinzy once learned: if you ignore your own thoughts and feelings, you save yourself the disappointment when the people in charge inevitably do the same.

In recent years, I’ve been trying my darnedest to embrace intent and its ability to help me feel healthy, confident, whole. One ritual, perhaps the most important one, that has emerged with it is my embrace of the things I don’t like about myself.

It’s much easier to remember I can read the IndieWeb instead of the NY Times if I don’t make myself feel bad about opening the news app in the first place. Breakfast is much easier if I acknowledge the feelings that are keeping me from preparing it. It’s okay to switch up the old Filofax and some fancy new note-taking app, as long as I make sure I can find my stuff later.

The ritual of kindness is the one I find myself developing with great intent. The kinder I am to myself, the easier it is to embark on that enormous journey, the one monks and nuns everywhere devote their entire lives to being on as the warm sunlight illuminates the austere dust particles in their private quarters: how to be kind to others.