Topic: Rituals

Source: CC readings on ritual: 31-33 , Chapter  4 ANTHRO reading

Relation: After reading what creates rituals and how they affect our lives, I witnessed my barber enact her ritual before she began to cut my hair. It helped me realize how very often we go about our rituals without even noticing it.

Description: A few days ago I visited my favorite barber, Mary Glavich, to get my regular haircut. The appointment started with me walking into a room of older women exchanging news and gossip, which is what I expected based off my previous visits. Mary greeted me, and then proceeded to enact the exact same process of preperation to cut my hair as she had done the last time. She began by asking "Jim off the office?" (the haircut I always ask for), and once I nodded she busily began her process. Her first step began by arranging all the needed implements for the cut on a tray with a towel, pulling most of them out of a cleaning solution and going over them with hot water. Next, she spun me around and dipped me back to wash my hair, following with a pre-cut shampooing. Once that wass complete she dried my hair and spun me so I'd face the main mirror again. She ran her fingers through my hair multiple times, to make sure it was straight, and to determine how it would change a cuts look once dried. After a quick run-through with a comb, along with the addition of a fantastic smelling hair product, she is ready to proceed. Here is where I initially realized Mary conducted a ritual before every cut: once my hair was fully prepared, Mary walked over and checked her cell phone, drank out of her canteen, and complimented her co-workers work on another customer (which reminded me of juicing in tattoo parlors).  The only reason these few minor actions caught my attention was because I had seen her do this the time before, and the time before that, each time a minute or two before my cut would begin. Once I had put it all together, I realized that Mary had been conducting her ritual from the time I had sat down to the beginning of her cut; the same ritual she performs over 20 times a day on her customers.

Commentary/Analysis: Rituals are very important, I go through many in a day and I find that if I miss any single one then my mindset will take a turn for the worst. Going about a ritual or routine can relax people, "giving their practitioners a sense of control, and with that, added confidence." (CC, 319) Mary's pre-cut routine is pretty simple, yet makes sense because it makes every one of her customers start at the same page, reguardless of the variety of hair she cuts. The drinking of her water and checking her cell phone are probably just habit, woven into the ritual over time. I'm a satisfied customer of Mary's, and i'd be worried if she was ever to deviate from the pre-cut ritual because it has proven successful so far. Like I said, I can lose it if I'm denied a ritual, and I've found that almost every action throughout my day is a scheduled set of rituals, with few changes day to day. Once we have a ritual down, we have trained ourselves to follow a process we believe leads to a more fulfilled life; and continue to do so until it is proved otherwise. Rituals are empowering, and they serve as a self-imposed training system for us to look to when we need comfort or control. Everyone needs their rituals; without them, we'd have little to revert back to, nothing to practice daily, and a lot less peace in situations when it would help.