New Year of Intention

I take my New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day rituals very seriously. They are slow and intentional. On the 31st I like to clean my space and remove clutter; I even had a special candle waiting to be burned. Briefly, I go through my journal, mentally clearing out the year then noting lessons learned or lessons that will continue to be worked through in this next chunk of my life.

On the 1st, I take my time, lingering in bed. I drink the yummiest coffee and set up some snacks. I create a vision board in the front page of my journal, express a couple detailed goals i will work towards, and take a photo of myself for my journal, so I remember this version of me when I look back later.

Moving into the new year this season, I am paying attention to what worked to keep me present and the many things were either forgotten or caused stress. I notice a correlation between these emotions and what felt ritualistic versus routine.

Routines have come to be associated with productivity and efficiency; stress came when I missed a day of my routine as I felt behind or lazy. The rigidness of my routines killed my sense of adaptability and intention. I am “doing” without a “why” connected to any feeling other than obligation. Some days were an endless cycle of autopilot and others, the days of sadness or exhaustion, the idea that I must complete fragments on my routine physically paralyzed me.

Rituals brought awareness into my practices. It was an active choice to go slow and carve out time to experience rather than cross something off of a to do list; rituals birth habits with deeper meaning because I pour more emotions into their purpose. The acts were about the feeling derived from the ritual, resulting in me feeling recharged and a little more at peace.

The line between the two can be miniscule, but I do not want to remember my life by productivity when I can alter the intention and remember my life by what my time here felt like. I am using my perception of these concepts to reframe practices from what I “should” do, to what my body and mind “want” to do for the sake of grounding and nourishment.

Where routines began to feel empty, rituals provided significance.

Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals

Through rituals, I will engage more with the world this year and abandon the sense of unconscious behavior that I often fall into from a routine. My practices will become the center of the ritual rather than myself; it is not completed for the sake of identity or ego but to remember my values and make them tangible acts.

Byung-Chul Han speaks on two types of perception:

Serial perception– an endless feed of stimulation that lacks meaning and duration; tasks are rushed with no sense of completion; we are incapable of lingering resulting in lack of attention

Symbolic perception– acts become more meaningful overtime and are not measured by productivity or accomplishments but rather by what we attend to; based on prolonged attention; reinforces what we already know to be true and our values

As Han suggests, my hope is to move into an era of symbolic perception through rituals where I find comfort, flexibility, and a grounding home base throughout life’s changes. I will participate; I will hold space. And I will be consistent because these intentional moments matter.

I want my time here to be saturated with moments of feeling deeply- and that will not be achieved through monotonous routines. I owe it to myself to intentionally drop into my ritualistic spaces and create meaning.