Ritual de lo Habitual: Finding Meaning in Life’s Maintenance
Ritual de lo Habitual: Finding Meaning in Life’s Maintenance
Adult life is full of maintenance—health, budgets, routines—that can feel monotonous. But with intention, maintenance becomes ritual, bringing joy, presence, and meaning to the everyday.
Adulthood is, in many ways, an endless list of maintenance tasks. You keep your body healthy with routines. You keep your mind in check with sleep and exercise. You maintain the car, the budget, the portfolio, the house. If you slack off, entropy takes over—time leaves a wake of destruction in its trail.
And if I’m being honest, maintenance feels boring. It’s a “have to” more than a “want to.” Necessary, yes, but monotonous. The French have a word for this flavorless state of life: ennui.
But there’s another way to see it. The band Jane’s Addiction called one of their albums Ritual de lo Habitual—literally, the ritual of the habitual. It was a nod to the habits that rule us, whether destructive or life-giving. That phrase keeps echoing in my mind: maintenance is unavoidable, but ritual is optional.
The difference is intention. Brushing my teeth is maintenance; grinding beans, making a piping hot cup of coffee, and sitting outside to feel sunlight on my skin is a ritual. It resets my circadian rhythm, slows the pace of the morning, and reminds me that I’m alive before the day barrels forward. Managing our family budget feels like drudgery; doing it while listening to an amazing album I’ve wanted to check out turns it into stewardship. Checking emails to me is watching paint dry. But if I do it while listening to Howard Stern, there is something that feels alive about doing it. It is less drudgery and more enjoyable.
Other cultures have long understood this rhythm. The Japanese tea ceremony elevates something as ordinary as preparing tea into art. Italians stroll their passeggiata each evening, not to get somewhere but to mark the day’s end. In Finland, the sauna is both cleansing and communal; in Korea, kimchi-making ties families and seasons together. Indigenous elders would say that ceremonies are the way we “remember to remember.” These practices remind us that ritual is less about what we do and more about how we do it.
And that’s what I want to hold onto, even in a fast-paced life. Not everything can be slow, but something can. A walk in the woods is one of my reset buttons—not just exercise, but a ritual of breathing with the trees, letting nature slow me down. I’ve written before about how those walks lift me when life feels heavy—you can read that reflection here.
Cooking a meal that feeds both body and soul, laughing with friends, watching my Mets, reading a good book, dropping the needle on a record—these are my daily speed bumps for the soul, reminders that life isn’t just about maintaining, but savoring.
Yes, maintenance is inevitable. But ritual is how I remind myself that I am alive, here, today.
On my September 23 walk, the forest announced its changes loud and clear — walnuts thudding down in a mast year, mosquitoes in last-call mode, pawpaw perfume gone, and late-blooming smartweed still holding on. These abundance signals remind me that the woods don’t whisper their shifts; they proclaim them.
Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest difference. For me, writing down a simple to-do list snapped me out of a rut and boosted my productivity overnight.
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