Constellating A Personal Ritual
Happy New Year
Dear Reader,
It’s a cold, gray morning, a day after the winter solstice, as I start this letter to you. Outside the windows, red-orange leaves float down lazily from the tree on the side of the road. Where they land on the tar road, the leaves look like bright stars that have tumbled down from the sky. The quiet morning after the longest night, the continuous movement of the leaves, and this stretch of time that sits at the cusp of new beginnings form a snow globe-like circle around me as I sit at my desk thinking about how I want to change my life in the new year. In 2024, I want to shift the structure of my days so that I can write more, and fiercely. I want to claim writing as my life purpose, and words as my tools. No one is stopping me from doing any of this, but a hundred invisible things get in the way. They create a real feeling of stuckness, of trying to move ahead while being pulled backward. I’ve spent time unraveling why I experience this push-pull even as I realize that writing is necessary soul work. I don’t want to wait to value my writing until someone else gives me permission or validation. I want to look back on 2024 and know that I wrote continually, and that I was wrung dry of words. Never has building a body of work felt more urgent or compelling, and yet something gets in the way. So, I’m here at my desk to talk to this ‘something’, and to perform a ritual to invoke a change. I’m going to use music, art, and words to create an opening. As soon as I say that, I’m reminded of Dr. Strange in the Marvel movies as he opens a portal in the time/space continuum (or something like that).
According to the dictionary, a ritual is “a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.” I am a great believer in the power of rituals. I grew up surrounded by them: long, complicated ones, short rituals made potent by their very abruptness, personal rituals that offered comfort, and those that invited change. This last one, a ritual to bring about change, is most fascinating because it functions as a threshold, and not just at the beginning of the new year. Let’s step through this door, you whisper to yourself lovingly as you perform it. Life, like a river, widens on the other side of the threshold.
I think of a personal ritual as a solemn ceremony consisting of actions that hold meaning and symbolism for you. Step 1: You are the most necessary part of your ritual. Bring your self to the table. When I think of the other parts of a ritual, I keep coming back to the word constellate, meaning “to group together” and related to the Latin word for stars, stella, because 1) a ritual often involves more than one kind of action (words, movement, etc.); and 2) more importantly, it’s a conversation or a dance between you and the stars. Step 2: Constellate words, movements, actions, etc. that hold meaning for you. You can be creative, and bring in art, dance, and symbolic play to make it meaningful. Step 3: It’s a threshold which means the past, present, and future are here, all bearing witness. As I type this, I find myself moved to tears. There is something potent and full of yearning in the words. I imagine a large, stone doorway in the middle of a body of water, and the past and the future as koi that cluster close to the surface of the water on either side of the doorway. The past, which has brought us here, is honored. We acknowledge the present moment (the doorway). We set an intention for the future.
A ritual is not a guarantee. Like all great conversations, there is a back and forth. You may repeat it more than once. Above all, it’s an invitation you extend to yourself to try something new.
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
―Anais Nin
Happy New Year!
Best,
Priya
What change do you want to bring about? More joy, more/less work, more rest, less stress, more kindness, more art, more writing..…
Happy new year! I, too, am on a quest to develop a deeper, more meaningful relationship with my writing. It’s challenging - there are so many distractions, external and internal - but like you I am drawn on by the feeling of urgency. If not now, when? I’m glad to connect with others on the same path.
I love the steps that you wrote down to create rituals, especially this: “the past, present, and future are here”. I can imagine past, present, and future me surrounding me as I journal or paint ritualistically.
Wish you a very Happy New Year, one filled with writing and words!