New Year's Eve

Days will pass by until once again it is time again to return to listening to lectures and reading notes and memorizing a lot of information. During the vacation there were rituals to attend to like feasts, gift-giving and going to mass.

Well, it's not like I can instantly say that I don't believe anymore. Given our country and it's religiosity, you really can't be sure how open the reaction of people will be. So far, I haven't encountered any negative reactions. Let's just say for the sake of my own safety and sanity, I've decided not to divulge my current belief system to the family. But the funny thing; I don't find going to mass a drudgery. However, honestly my mind was blank during the entire service.

But then, why do we do these rituals? One can say there's a cultural, social and psychological reason for these rituals even though we think of them as drudgery. For instance, the typical Catholic mass. It's the same readings all over again. There's even a scheduled reading for a particular day. Yet many Catholics go to mass again and again. One can say they've been conditioned given the early indoctrination but that's more of a psychological reason; something not in the scope of this essay.

And then there are my rituals. In a regular day (Monday to Friday) it's: 1)go to class, 2)sleep in class, 3)eat lunch, 4)chat with friends, 5)go home, 6)eat dinner, 7)work-out, 8)read class transcriptions and 9)sleep. These sequence of events will vary if it's a weekend or a holiday but generally that's it. Pretty repetitive and simple and yes, boring. Yet why do I do it?

I'll venture a guess and say it's because of meaning. Now that's an overused word: meaning. You may have heard this, "what gives meaning to your life?" And well my answer to that would be the very rituals a person does during his/her lifetime.

Going back to the example of the Catholic mass if you really think about it, why would an

omnipotent and omniscient being demand worship from his creations. Of course, there is a convoluted theological explanation which I'm not going to place here because quite frankly I've forgotten it. Anyway think about it. What comes to your mind when a being demands worship? Dictators in the form of Mao, Stalin and Hitler. Worship would be a sign that that being is insecure because if a being is all-powerful and all-knowing and perfect why would it require impotent, ignorant and imperfect humans worshipping it? Do Catholics worship this being because they're afraid of its wrath? Then that makes this being no different from the aforementioned dictators.

So, at least in my view, Catholics go to mass again and again because it gives meaning to their own lives in the same manner my ritual gives meaning to my own life. Before I continue on, note that I am not discouraging Catholics from going to mass. It so happened I thought of using that as an example. If that's what gives meaning to your own life go ahead; just don't force other people to go with you.

On this New Year's Eve, think of the rituals you've done the past 364 days. Did you do them because
they add meaning to your own life or were you just forced? Were there some rituals you adopted because it became routine? Not that there's anything wrong with routine. But keep doing something everyday without pausing and thinking its significance; this action becomes routine. It is this becoming routine that unhealthy habits such as eating salty foods and a sedentary lifestyle becomes
ingrained and very hard to change. On the other hand, starting a work-out schedule is hard because of the opposite reason: it's not routine.

And I anticipate that one of the common New Year's resolutions out there would be to get fit. And expectedly, these resolutions would all fail because that person didn't make "getting fit" part of his/her own routine. The rituals one adopts reflects the meaning one attaches to one's own life.

The message is simple:

On this New Year's Eve if you're thinking of adopting new rituals and discarding old rituals you better re-define the meaning you give to your own life. You cannot blindly adopt a new ritual thinking you'll get the desired results without first re-defining your own meaning.