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Coronavirus Rituals
By Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown April 3, 2020 - 8:41am Comments (2)
An article by anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas about the role that ritual is playing during the COVID-19 pandemic, including as an anxiety response, providing connection, and as a tool of resilience.
Comments
The article left me wondering if I there is anything I do in my life that I would consider a ritual.
Tobin Vadeboncoeur April 7, 2020 - 12:43am
Good question, Tobin. Often we focus on the idea of ritual being something solely to do with religion or formal/dignified actions, involving intentional symbolism, but you could also open it up to a general routine. I normally have my "morning ritual" of waking up, washing up, drinking coffee, having breakfast, and going to work. If anything disturbs that routine then the rest of my day is quite wonky and I don't feel right (for no good reason, they don't have to be in that particular order for any purpose that I know of [other than waking first]). So, perhaps there is something 'spiritual' and 'symbolic' about that as well (encompassing notions of 'completeness' and 'correctness'). I find that during this time of self-isolation I am relying even more heavily on my "rituals," as well as creating some new ones. Some appear to be far more flexible than others (not sure why). How will this impact who I am on the other side of this?
Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown April 7, 2020 - 9:02am