Ritual

A personal essay by Sara McOmber

The actions I do every day—those mundane, repetitive tasks—create a life not of meaningless routine, but of accumulated, beautiful experiences.


All my life, I’ve been terrified of mediocrity. Failure, though scary, is not nearly as devastating as the
idea that I’ll be just average—someone that people meet and immediately forget. What could be worse than living out a simple life and then passing on, the world not any different for your having lived in it? This fear has led me to a disdain of routine. I’ve believed that days filled with the same actions couldn’t possibly add up to a unique or noteworthy life. If each day is the same, how could my life be special?

And a lot of what I do each day is the same.

Laces

Morning light hasn’t yet touched our bedroom window as I roll reluctantly out of bed and pull on my leggings and sweatshirt. I strap on my bulky watch and re-adjust when it fits too loose at first. Careful not to wake Brady, I reach with two fingers, one in each shoe, and whisk out my dirty, well-worn running shoes. The little castle and rhinestone-tiara jewelry strung onto the laces glint in the half-light, reminders of the half-marathon I ran with my mom in Disney World a few years ago.

My feet slide into the shoes with the ease of having done so hundreds of times before. As I tug on the shoes’ tongues, pull the laces tight, and tie the loops in a double knot—a mindless act after having completed the exact same motion almost every day for years—I remember doing so before dozens of high school meets and several road races with my parents. I’m taken back to the excitement and dread, mingled with foggy sleepiness, that I felt while doing this early in the morning in our Carmel, Indiana, hotel before my first marathon. It felt just a little different when I laced up my spikes before a cross country meet, the smaller, thinner shoes feeling like almost nothing on my feet, but having to be careful where I stepped once they were on so as not to puncture a nearby water bottle or the tarp under our tent. I can see in my mind’s eye several different running stores—Bluemile, Fleet Feet, Ken Combs—all with somehow nearly identical employees, where I tried on new shoes once mine finally wore out (again), the stiff fabric feeling foreign and bulky. With the comfort of these memories wrapped around me, I step out into the frozen early morning air and begin to run.

Though this happens every day, I’ve realized the routine is comforting rather than condemning. Wherever I’ve run, however fast or laboriously, I have to begin with the motion of tugging on shoes and tying up laces. The shoes change, the races change, the companions change, the weather, the trail, the difficulty—nothing is constant but the laces. The laces tie all the experiences together in one, pulling my life together because they’ve been with me since the beginning. This repetitive motion is not finite in the moment; it is representative of thousands of unique experiences that I feel blessed to call mine.

Mascara

Upon returning home, showering and getting dressed, and trying—unsuccessfully—for the hundredth time to figure out what to do with my soaking wet hair, I slather moisturizer onto my face (in an effort to keep my humidity-loving skin happy in the parched Utah air) and paint on concealer where it’s needed, ending by picking up my mascara tube.

The strokes of black liquid on my eyelashes are quick and mechanical, though the results are bewilderingly anything but consistent. Though I spend very little time on perfecting the uneven lashes most days, I can’t forget the times I sat in front of a mirror and painstakingly adjusted and reapplied the makeup until I thought it was as close to perfect as possible.

Before my first date, I analyzed the mascara at every angle by making all the faces I thought I could possibly make. I was going to the movies anyway, so no one even really saw the results of my long, hard efforts. My senior prom, the year I went with my crush’s older brother, the dark lashes veiled slightly gaudy blue and silver eyeshadow to match my floor-length, navy, sequined dress. The dress fades to white as I think of my wedding day, nerves and excitement mingled inside me, making my hands shake and delicate makeup application nearly impossible.

In the short time that I now dedicate to swiping on the black liquid, I am none of the girls that I remember and somehow all of them at once. In the years that I’ve spent growing, changing, developing as a person, so much about me has been transformed. I have worn different clothes, developed different hobbies, lived in different countries. But the small black tube of mascara has been a constant companion, a silent observer of the years gone by.

Now I’m grateful for that consistency that I once thought monotonous, because I see that growth happens quietly and slowly. I don’t need to look down on the ordinary experiences of every day, because those build and become powerful, impactful changes.

Pets

Inexpert makeup applied, I slide my arms into my coat sleeves—hand clutching my sweater sleeve underneath so it doesn’t bunch up—and swing my backpack onto my shoulder. I pull the door closed behind me, turn to face it again, and tug it closer so that the stubborn bolt will jam into place.

I stroll across the never-busy road in front of our building and head towards the little yellow house almost on the corner of the street: my daily stop before continuing my journey up to campus. As I round the house’s corner, I’m delighted to see that my little greeter is out today, tail wagging and paws dancing as I call out a “hello” to her and lean over the fence for a slobbery kiss. Mya’s innocent excitement and pure devotion are my tether to the memories I have of my own dogs.

Her unbridled joy is reminiscent of Mozart’s, whose one-volume-only bark and shark-tooth smile frightened everyone who walked by our house, but the playful German Shepherd couldn’t understand why, seeing as how he only wanted to make a friend. Mya kisses me the same way he did—unrelenting, despite my (albeit weak) protests. I have to admit, Mozart’s affection was more smothering than hers, all 110 pounds of him barreling across the yard to shower you with love. But Mya’s softer kisses make me remember Mozart’s sloppy ones, his one-up-one-floppy ears pushed back as he tried to lick my face. Pushing him away was always a challenge, not just because he was stronger than I was, but because I adored him with everything in me.

Mya finally relaxes and sits still, staring up at me while I scratch under her chin. Her dignity in that moment brings Sheba to my mind, our haughty-but-unexpectedly-goofy ebony Great Dane. I’ve heard Great Danes are velcro dogs, wanting to stick by their people and follow them everywhere. Sheba apparently wasn’t informed of this. She always seemed to think she was above us, sitting straight up to watch us down her nose or crouched down to stare at her reflection in the fireplace glass. I love to tease her, sitting right next to her (which annoys her desperately) but scratching behind her ears so she doesn’t really want me to leave. Her mental battle between the disgust of having her personal space violated and the joy of having her ears scratched was obvious in her face and body language. She is more human than dog, really.

Sometimes—on very sad days—Mya isn’t roaming free in her backyard behind the yellow house, but instead locked in a smaller fenced-in area within the yard, out of my reach. When she sits there looking at me mournfully as I stop and wave and tell her she’s still a good girl, her big eyes and curious expression morph into Milo’s. Our malamute foster dog in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was only with us for a week. He didn’t quite know us in the beginning, and he spent a lot of time on the opposite couch from Brady and me, alternating watching us and keeping tabs on the goings-on out the front window. He slowly opened up and would come cuddle with us, which only served to break our hearts when we had to give him back.

The connection I have to my four-legged family could never be replaced, and my daily visits with Mya pull it to the surface so that all the joy, pain, and overwhelming love bleed into me afresh. I’m grateful for that, as I walk on to my first class, because it makes me vulnerable and happy, which traits I’ve seen and admired in most every dog I’ve met. I could never regret the time I spent with my beloved furry friends. Though I once thought the only way to find success in life was to have a flashy career and gorgeous, sprawling house, I’ve come to see that my dogs, my friends, and my family—real relationships—are a much better indicator of real happiness.

* * *

These daily repetitive acts that become automatic and mindless after so long have intense meaning only understood when we have lived every moment behind them. Joseph Campbell said, “The function of ritual, as I understand it, is to give form to human life, not in the way of a mere surface arrangement, but in depth.” What we do every day becomes our rituals. Actions like that—ones that have become ingrained in us the way only something done thousands of times can be—are few and rare. Maybe I thought these actions mundane and even indicative of failure at first, but now I pause and look at them more intensely, staring into the waters I thought were so shallow, finding that I can’t see the bottom.

I’ve gained much more appreciation for the quiet successes in life. I can celebrate the good run, a well-done make-up job, and meeting a happy puppy. I can celebrate health, beauty, and relationships. These are things I once brushed off as being “ordinary.” Now I see that they make life rich. Daily, repetitive acts may appear meaningless to the casual observer, but if you look closely, you’ll see the reflection of years of memories and joy in my mind, held together and brought to light by ritual.

Image Credits: "To-do list," "Shoes," "Mascara," and "Dog," by Sara McOmber