Writing as a ritual
I started writing a journal about two months ago. I figured that way I’ll create a good habit and maybe get better at writing and generally expressing my thoughts in words. First few days I was forcing myself to write because I felt like there is nothing to write about, I mean yes, I had things happening during the day that I could write about but still it felt like nothing special, and I wanted to write about something that is special, something I won’t be bored reading about in a year or so. In spite of my boring life and non so creative mind, I wrote. I wrote about my boring days passing by, my boring thoughts also passing by, my boring cat throwing up and then eating the vomit, my boring veggies sprouting in the garden even tho it’s winter. I was just writing about stuff happening inside and outside of me, not inventing anything new, just writing it down how it was. After a while I didn’t need to force myself to write anymore, writing became just something I do when I wake up, like going to pee. I mean I was still writing about boring stuff but I started feeling better after doing it, even during it. I started feeling that every sentence I write is just a part of me managing to find a form to exist outside of me, like I was giving birth to sentences. It also feels like some things are just much easier to accept when they are written down. Some stuff that feels heavy in the head becomes kinda comical on paper, sometimes I laugh loudly when I’m writing about stuff like that. Paper is like a friend that doesn’t talk too much, just listens. This writing practice really did became a habit.
I started noticing that 10 minutes before I start writing I always just stare at some blank point on the wall and think about nothing at all, then I start writing, and afterwards I feel like I’m entering the day at the moment I stop writing, like I couldn’t start it without writing, like this action of writing was a passage to the rest of the day. Maybe this is a bit unclear, what I wanna say is that I feel like after I write down my page for the day I feel transformed, like writing just a little bit changes my perspective on the day ahead. The thing is now I don’t see this practice of writing as only a habit anymore, I’m starting to see it as a ritual.
Whats the difference?
A habit is something we do just to do it, we do it almost automatically, and its main goal is to be done. A ritual, on the other hand, has its phases, and the goal of a ritual is to achieve a transformation, a transition from the starting point of an action to the next one. There is this french anthropologist, Arnold van Gennep, he wrote a book in which he explains elements that construct rituals. He says there are three elements, actually three phases, that are universally present in every ritual: separational phase, transitional phase and reintegrational phase. In separational phase we are preparing for the ritual action, we are setting the mood, in this phase we tend to separate ourselves from our surroundings in some way so we can clear our head and enter the next phase without burdens of previous thoughts and experiences. In case of my writing practice I do this by staring at the wall for 10 minutes. The next phase, transitional phase, is a liminal one. Liminality is a concept that describes those in-between moments where old structures stopped existing but new ones are not yet built. For example, when some law stops being valid but there is no new law to replace it, this is a liminal situation. In liminality, everything exists as a potential, but nothing yet exists as a definite realization of that potential. Everything is possible, but at the same time, nothing yet is done about it. In my writing practice I see this liminality in trying to find the right words. For some of my thoughts I just don’t have the proper words, and that is when I start looking for them in the field of endless possible words that could be used to express this one thought, I engage in a process of inventing a verbal form which will give meaning to my thoughts. So writing becomes a transformative process, thoughts are being transformed into something else. Words are, in this sense, distilled symbolic forms that take their shape during a period of transformation, in which meanings become fluid and therefore open to elaboration. In the last phase during a ritual, the reintegrational one, if the person managed to find a new frame of existing in the liminal phase, the person is now transformed and goes back to his community as a new person, in a way, just like after writing I go back to my day feeling like I’ve changed.
Thanks for reading!