Old Rituals, New Ways

Sitting in my room anticipating my chai as it boils on the stove, and the rain spatters across my window pane, I’m already in love with 2019. If any of you know me, well, considering my family is my most loyal reader base, they do know me, they know that I love easily. The rain, the flowers, a good book, the smell of books, hugs, kisses. It doesn’t take much for me to love something. And this year is no different.

Every new year I wonder if something will change. I understand the idea that logically, it’s just another day, but emotionally, psychologically, every new year, every birthday feels like a new beginning.  With every new beginning, it feels like a new life in the same familiar, comfortable package.

What has changed this year though, is how I feel about the old rituals. About writing, praying, painting, cleaning. I feel better about them. Yes, yes, it’s not a life altering one of a kind experience, it’s a slow, regular, inching that is normalizing my old ways. As the world opens up virtually, I’ve found that more people are similar than different. Right or wrong in that similarity is an entirely different conversation, but the mere notion of being similar has incredible power.

A friend of mine joked that I had a high standard of cleanliness. Five years ago, in undergrad I would have scoffed and ridiculed the idea, today I opened up Netflix and enjoyed the Marie Kondo show, consuming it with the glee of a 3-year-old in a candy store basking in the normalcy of needing a clean room to think straight. Reveling in the idea that more people think similarly and need similar things.

It’s no surprise then, this year too will be a continuation of the past many years that I’ve spent into becoming who I want to be and going where I need to go and loving the things and people I already do.

This year too, I’ll keep my old rituals, my old ways, and do them in new ways for everything, including the people I love and the way I express that love. Love also needs to mirror an old ritual in a new way. Even today, my family gives me the greatest joy. Every day, I choose to love them more, understand them more, and ignore the itch to think ‘I already know them’, because I’ve learned that everyone and everything changes and I need to understand and adapt and enjoy those changes.

But well, on a lighter note, here is a poem on the need to be vulnerable (but obviously I never say that directly. What’s the fun in that?)

I hope this year, every year, finds you sitting down to your old tried and tested rituals and having a go at them with new enthusiasm and hope.

I’ll see you soon.

With virtual love and health,

Sanah