Jan 06 2009
The Ritual
When we are kids the world is too big for our understanding.
Things happen and you don’t see the correlation between cause and effect. You live in a magical dimension where anything might be real and really acting in your favor. Or against you.
Grown ups read us fairy tales to comfort us and soothe our fears.
Some kid get over this scary feeling thru games and plays and focusing to something on the outside: sports, friends, particular skills. They grow up, floating thru childhood, apparently unwounded.
But some of them seem to refuse to be so powerless.
They are made with a stubborn material.
They try to control the reality. And in starting this they are doomed forever.
I was one of those kids.
I always had control issues, evidently.
I guess my need was sprouting from absorbing the not so subliminal messages I was receiving from my parents.
Nothing in my family seemed written on the stone. My father was a volatile figure: he was rarely with us therefore he could have left us at any time.
My mom was an emotional mess that some behaviors of my father would crush in long bursts of depression or anger. My brother developed his own survival skills thru raucous friends and dirty magazines. My sister grew up as the most fragile and most vulnerable of us all and developed her longtime habits of depression and obsessive behaviors. She would lock herself in the closet and scream for hours.
As you can see, I was feeling pretty much left alone.
So I decided to take control.
The way I figured out how to have a hold of my life was the Ritual.
Rituals have always been, since ancient times, the tool thru which people had convinced themselves of being able to control their reality: they believed they could control weather, the life events, the love of another person, the healing of the sick ones, and especially the benevolence of their moody Gods (religions had developed upon rituals, after all) if they would have followed the Rituals. Strictly.
So I had to find the perfect ritual for me.
I still remember vividly how I figured out.
It was a hot summer afternoon. Back from the beach, after lunch we had to lay down and rest. It was siesta time. The “sonnellino”.
The nap after lunch. My siblings were already sleeping or dozing somewhere. I was laying on my bed.
And I had a deck of cards on my hands.
I remember starting to ponder about the apparent perfection of numbers. At least, the ones I knew at the time. I was probably 10.
I was in that age in which I still was liking numbers. A so short season…;-).
I remember casually laying the cards in front of me.
The geometric perfection of all those figures hit me.
Each of them was a symbol.
Each of them had a meaning.
The One was one. The King was the King, the Queen was the Queen….ace, spade club and flowers. They were looking at me. They were comforting me with their one-dimensional design.
I started to give each card a different meaning. I started to shuffle the cards and count them from the first until the tenth. I started to write on my notebook the card that wpuld have popped out. Then I would start counting from the 11th card to the 20th…and writing down the numbers …..and so on and on.
Ad infinitum.
Once I started, it seemed I couldn’t put the cards down. I had to count them. It would become more complicated and more intricate each day, since i would start the next day from the numbers of the day before…it was like Penelope’s work….endless….
My mind was busy and therefore free from worries and anxiety.
Immediately I started to give to any numbers that would have been picked out the meaning I wanted: one day it would have been “If I add this and this and I have 30 the boy I like will look at me”.
The next day it was something like “If I subtract 50 to the last sum and I will have less that 100 I will have new clothes. Or I will go to the movie or I will have a good grade or I will have a new clothes”.
But mostly was all about the boys……and singers…and movie actors …lol..
I would lay there on my bed for hours….my mother would come to hurry me up to do something and I would hide the cards.
Because nobody had to know about my ritual.
It was a mandatory requirement for its effectiveness….it would have worked ONLY if remained secret
I think I went on with this obsession for months.
I was feeling better in doing it. Observing the Ritual gave me hope in some kind of order in the universe. I had a place. The cards were telling me what would have happened.
Doesn’t work the same with horoscope, tarot card readings, religion?
We believe in a bigger order and in a hidden meaning and we feel less restless, safe, with a purpose and a meaning.
The Ritual fell off me suddenly, like suddenly started. I don’t recall any particular event…it just happened. One day I simply stopped counting.
I threw that useless notebook full of numbers.
I had found probably new ways to grab the reality around me. I was growing up.
Have you ever had some ritual in your life?
Do your kids have one?
