Who knew cleaning out the cat litter could be so cathartic.
Cleansing.
For both the cats and me.
Who would ever have thought that the seemingly mundane tasks of vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, could become something meditative, cerebral and revered.
It's all perspective.
I recently learned that by turning our so-called workaday routines into observed rituals, we can reinvent our entire beings.
We can become wholly immersed in the moment of doing whatever it is we have to do, and be transformed.
It is transformational indeed.
And it's all perspective.
How you look at things.
Perceive them.
Our entire attitude changes by how we look upon things.
By changing the perception of our mundane routines and thinking upon them as privileged rituals.
Rites of passage.
A privilege to be able to carry out.
Indeed.
Instead of dreading the routines of our daily lives and existences: walking the dog, weeding the garden, making dinner; thinking of them instead as honourable routines that the privilege of our lives allow us to carry out.
For indeed, we could be, and maybe some of us are, living in a country where we must walk several kilometres to get water from a well.
Instead, we have water at the turn of a tap.
We flush our waste with a flick of a handle.
We wash our clothes with the turn of a dial.
We heat our food with the press of a button.
We have nothing short of a miraculous existence.
Those before us could only imagine what the future may have held.
Cutting the grass is not a duty, but a privilege; for to have grass to cut means one has a bit of real estate, property, that one has stewardship over, the gift of caring for.
For those routines mean that we have earned some sort of reward in the ownership of things, be they big or small.
That we owe the duty and care to those things, and for that, we should all be so grateful.
Not entitled, not begrudging.
It could all be so much worse.
Imagine the countries that are being plagued with war and unrest and social injustice.
And be enamored by the freedom that we are allowed and can choose what we wish and wish not to do.
So, doing the dishes? Thank you!
Taking out the garbage? Thank you!
Cleaning the toilets! Double thank you!
All our routines becoming rituals of gratitude - in that we are living in a place in the world where we have them to do - and are able to do them - of our own free will and choice.
Because in the end, having a choice is all that really matters.
Happy rituals!