By Dr. Anna C. Gersh
You are what your deep driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.
-Brihadarayaka Upanishad [iv]
What we choose to do in this life matters. There is no doubt that how we choose to spend our time while we’re inhabiting this astral plane has an effect on our outlook, how others perceive us, and the patterns we set for ourselves throughout our lives.
One type of activity I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is something I’ve decided to start calling “Rituals of Care”—those activities we do that include a certain care component—that is some aspect of the labor that feeds into something greater than what it does, in a practical, applied sense, for you.
This happens most easily in labor you do for others, but it can also include the type of labor you do for yourself or your family that requires you to engage directly with the task—something that is done with your own hands and is resistant to short cuts. Making food, scrubbing your kitchen floor, painting your bedroom walls, carrying water, talking to children, writing anything with a pen or pencil. Each of these activities have the potential to become a Ritual of Care.
There is a lot of conversation around this type of activity lately. The language of mindfulness is used to describe actions when done with an engaged mind. Mindful engagement is about doing things thoughtfully, but the language of mindfulness, especially as it’s used in a lot of K-12 curriculum content (where it is virtually ubiquitous these days) lacks the critical constituent notion of universal purpose.
Engaging with a task in a mindful way is only a first step. If you ask kids who are engaged in “mindfulness exercises,” as I have in my role as an after school program evaluation consultant, why they are doing “mindfulness exercises,” they will typically say things along the lines of “to relax”; “to calm us down”; or “to give the teacher a rest,” which means they are viewing it as an activity that is closer to nap time than one capable of developing critical cognitive infrastructure and an awareness of humanity’s shared connection.
Rituals of care are activities that, regardless of the nature of the task, serve to link us to all humanity. To nourish oneself or others through thoughtful food preparation or to be fully present in communication; to organize or clean a space toward improved access, utility, or service; to teach or to provide physical assistance to others; to tend the earth—these actions provide a direct conduit of shared experience to the rest of humanity—all people everywhere have to do these things—this is the nexus where mindfulness connects directly to the human condition.
Recently, three high school friends and I have been clearing out the home of one of our recently deceased parents. This is one of those big, old homes filled with the acquisitions of long lives, a large family, and better than moderate wealth. In short, it was packed with stuff and since one of us is an environmental engineer, every bit of it has had to go to the correct reuse center, second hand shop, or EGLE approved disposal site. Needless to say, the time investment has already been substantial ,and I’d be surprised if we’d made it through 30% of what’s in there.
The task, monotonous as it is to dismantle well over 500 paper file folders, separating each from its metal frame and sorting the contents into shred, keep, trash, or recycle is, in its mindless ordering, done in the service of community, in the company of friends, and on the occasion of an important passing. This is a Ritual of Care. The conversation and long connection of old friends, the universality of death and time passing has fostered some valuable considerations for all of us.
But I don’t think it’s necessary to have a big life event to motivate meaningful, mindful connection to a task. In the spring I grow a small garden around our home. By the time everything is planted, I’ve usually got around 20-25 potted plants:beans, tomatoes, peppers, etc. It’s not possible every day, but as often as I can I like to use the rain barrel to methodically fill the watering can and hand water the plants. It usually takes about 30 minutes—not super long if you plan for it, but certainly long enough to render it an unacceptable inconvenience for most people with a hose. When I started doing it, it was a simple effort to save water. Over time, I began to enjoy the repetitive exercise of walking to the rain barrel, waiting while the can filled, and walking back to pour the water deliberately on each plant. I intentionally adjusted the amount of water given based on the dampness of the soil and took the opportunity to observe daily changes in the growth and position of each plant. Eventually, I started to think about all the people in the world who have to carry water and how completely fortunate I am to live in a place where fresh water is abundant, safe, and accessible. Watering the plants by hand has become, for me, a Ritual of Care.
Engaging in Rituals of Care is one antidote to a dangerously polarized world. The value is that it brings us into meaningful mental connection with all people everywhere who, regardless of location, sex, race, social, or economic status, in some way or another have to deal with the same things. We have a long way to go to get to world peace but recognizing our shared humanity through a few basic human actions is certainly a first step.
Dr. Anna Gersh is a lifelong Ann Arbor resident. She is a parent, educator, program evaluator, artistic thinker, and lay-philosopher.
