By Jennifer Spurr, Psy.D.
Growing up in central Ohio, fall was my favorite time of year. I loved it when the humid
summer air turned crisp and cool, and the trees changed into their autumn wardrobes of orange,
yellow and red. Catching fireflies on hot summer nights gave way to picking apples on Saturday
afternoons, and pool parties turned into hayrides. It was a change that I anticipated year after
year. Living in Florida, fall just isn’t the same; and while I appreciate the mild winter weather, I
miss those fall days and the memories they hold.
There is something to be said for the rhythm of seasons in our lives. While change is
inevitable, it helps if there are rituals or traditions that provide a foothold for us to hold onto
when everything around us is evolving and changing. In our modern context where it seems
that there is a new challenge, a new disaster, a new social media platform, or a new opportunity
every day, rituals provide stability and structure. This in turn has the potential to reduce our
anxiety by providing us with a sense of familiarity, safety, and control in the middle of situations
that appear unfamiliar and unsafe.
Consider the rituals that many people have around sporting events. While a fan may
understand cognitively that wearing a pair of “lucky socks” does not truly have an impact on how
their team plays, wearing them gives the fan a sense of belonging and identifying with their
team. It gives the fan a sense of being “in it” with their team because they have a role to
play—wearing those socks! And while there is no magic for the team in the fan wearing them, it
gives the fan a sense of agency and purpose.
Rituals are like that. We may think that we are beyond the need for those yearly
traditions of apple picking and bonfires, but the reality is that these activities ground us. It is part
of the reason that we return to many of the same recipes each Thanksgiving despite the
abundance of new ones that are delivered to us via the Food Network and food blogs. We live
in a world of constant change—and many of them – maybe even most of them – are scary. And
so, if we can count on the same pumpkin pie that we ate last year, it gives us a sense that
everything will be okay. At least one thing stayed the same.
Life keeps moving forward, and time keeps marching on. We age, our parents age, our
children grow up, and we find ourselves entering the same yearly seasonal cycles from a
constantly changing perspective. We may even find ourselves circling the seasons from new
places where we experience them differently. When we can engage in meaningful rituals and
traditions from year to year, we find that our sense of self remains steady. This helps us find a
sense of peace and purpose amid our ever-changing world.
Questions to consider: What traditions or rituals help you stay grounded during times of
transition and change? What meanings do you assign to these? Who can you invite to join
you?