The Joyful Solace of Routines and Rituals

How sordidly often our lives feature unwelcome hard resets — the sort of gut-wrenching change no one saw coming and even fewer people wanted — and that’s why I place such emphasis in my own life on routines and habits and time-honoured conventions. It is, I feel, a version of an approach most of us know well. Little rituals which help punctuate our lives against the shifting sands, a stabilising bulwark against all of life’s tumult. But also: what joy there is in all these time-honoured traditions and habits! Not just the joy of the routine itself, but the routine’s joyful reminder to us — in a reassuringly quiet and steadying way — of how much joy there is in the world, and how much fun there is to be had in it. <h2>Neural pathways and the limbic system</h2> And so it is with my annual August pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Festivals. The Edinburgh International Festival, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Edinburgh International Book Festival, The Edinburgh International Film Festival — they are a glorious expression of art and culture and creative enterprise, and all of them set up shop in my home town. I used to live in Edinburgh, and part of me is forever surprised I don’t still. I grew up in that city, and I studied there, and I worked there for a time, too. The city, I like to think, has its own quadrant in my hippocampus. A place which safeguards the core of who I am, and all that I might yet be. So it’s not just the event, and it’s not just the place. It’s the fusion of the two, at that particular time of year. <a href="https://medium.com/counterarts/the-joyful-solace-of-routines-and-rituals-2f967b63782a">Learn More</a>