Emotion Rituals: How We Ready Ourselves for the Day

When most of us think of rituals, the first images that come to mind are formal ceremonies, like those in a church or courtroom. Sometimes, those ceremonies mark great transitions in our lives, such as births, marriages, and deaths. On such occasions, symbolically charged words, acts, and settings announce to others that we are a different sort of person now and should be treated as such.

Typically, events like these are expressly public affairs, featuring well-practiced routines that everyone recognizes and remembers. They have strong moral implications. The vows, testimonies, and judgments made have lasting effects. Ultimately, what those declarations mean is that we accept the customs of our communities and our places in that social order.

However, these aren’t the only kinds of rituals. At the opposite extreme are well-worn personal behaviors, sometimes little more than habits. Our daily lives are composed of dozens of these small chains of self-directed action, such as the way we assemble our breakfast or organize our desk at work. Most of these behaviors—some, quite idiosyncratic—aren’t noticed by others. They don’t conform to “public” rules. They don’t “define” us to the community at large.

Instead, and as I emphasize here, personal rituals coordinate our “feelings” for the day’s events. They reassure us that we are essentially the same person we were yesterday—that is, looking and feeling as we did then and possessing the same range of abilities and connections to the world. However much we believe that each day offers fresh possibilities, we depend profoundly on our little routines. They anchor our lives, giving us confidence to move ahead and, indeed, freeing our minds for creative ventures.

For such reasons, I call these small activities “emotion rituals.” As I’ve discussed in other posts, emotion is the ever-shifting sense of self in circumstance. When we experience—and frequently verbalize—these complex feelings, we essentially register “how we are doing” in situations. That is, we declare what we think of those circumstances, how we feel they affect us, and what action possibilities we envision. Emotions help us move into, within, and through events.

Because private rituals are so important to our feeling confident about our daily trajectories, let’s consider three kinds of contexts below:

1. Behavior transitions

Again, we usually think of rituals as honored social formats that reinforce cherished values, traditions, groups, and statuses. However, the prominent anthropologist Victor Turner stressed that they are also passages that help people make status transitions. In rituals, people feel themselves changed. At the end of their ritual journey, they re-enter society, newly identified and empowered.

Many of our personal rituals have just the same effect, though it may be only ourselves that recognize the transition. Think of the routines surrounding our awakening each morning. To be sure, there are many “decisions” to be made. Shall we get dressed now or wait a bit? If we dress, in what order should we put on our clothes? Some of us will conduct daily ablutions now—brushing teeth, combing hair, shaving, and the like. How should these be done? Do we “go to the bathroom” or wait?

A few steps to the kitchen and our riser confronts a seemingly overwhelming range of choices. What to eat and drink and in what order? Whether and where to sit? What level of cleaning up should be done?

I submit that nearly all of us have some bleary-eyed routines we follow. We check “what it’s like” outside, not just the weather but other kinds of news. We look at ourselves in the mirror to see that things are as they should be. We “head out” much as we do every morning.

Yes, our routines save us time and energy. But they also make us feel right. They divide the day into prescribed moments or sectors that we move into and through. Finished with the early morning stuff, we’re ready for something else.

Be clear that these routines—as personal transitions—go on throughout the day. Sectors commonly include commuting, early morning work, break, late morning work, lunch, and so forth. By the workday's end, we “wind down” or “close up.” And after-work segments of the day are often just as patterned.

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2. Electronic companionship

Building a routine commonly involves certain tools or props. Much as a chair, table, and plate solidify an eating arrangement, so we rely on various communications media to make clear the occasion we’re in.

Until recently, people pored over the newspaper as an accepted part of morning routines. In part, that connected them with external happenings. But it was also an impediment to other kinds of communication, perhaps with one’s spouse. The reader purportedly is “doing something” (even if it is only absorbing sports news) while they are eating. That withdrawal—like “having your nose in a book”—allows one to assemble their own thoughts and feelings in a privately managed way.

Our world of electronic communication dramatically extends these possibilities. Versus print and broadcast culture, one can enter these cultural environs at any time of their choosing. Mealtimes, breaks (both official and unofficial), travel, and even shopping find people playing with their phones. The goal, it seems, is to be only partly present in the immediate, face-to-face world.

Moreover, modern media is interactive, so that the viewer is drawn more deeply—and more repetitively—into a fictive realm of excitements, rewards, and other inducements. Consider, for example, a breakfast spent playing online word games like “Wordle” or “Connections.” Players’ attempts to solve puzzles are augmented by the machine’s responses to those efforts (perhaps “Awesome” or “Whew”). They’re encouraged to compare their accomplishments to what others have done that day—or to the “Bot.” More insidiously, the machine records their “streak” of solutions. I can report here that several people I know become upset when that streak is broken, either by failure or just by not playing the game that day.

Many other electronic devices follow the same pattern. Our step counters/health monitors keep records of what we do. So do apps that register the sounds of bird species. All this enforces a regularity to our days, most of which involves a retreat into privacy.

3. Personal comforts

Consider a final set of contexts. Among the curiosities of 21st-century America is the transformation of the strip mall. There was a time when small shops sold tangible products that people used or consumed. Bakeries, butcher shops, and hardware stores come to mind.

Nowadays, these shops are filled by tanning salons, nail parlors, hair cutters, dance studios, martial arts centers, vape shops, and gyms. Notably, these settings sell services rather than products. Typically, these services feature some kind of self-repair or enhancement. The point of the transaction is that we should feel better about ourselves when we leave the store.

More to the point, they sell the “experience” of being in these settings and receiving the service in question. In that regard, they resemble restaurants, which are only partly in the business of providing food. As in the case of all but the lowest-end restaurants, the customer is met at the front by an attractive young person. They are taken to a location deeper in the store where the service is provided. The provider encourages you to call them by their first name. Ideally, the service area has a partition or other form of privacy. The client controls the level of intimacy, including the name (if any) they wish to be called.

Note well. Because most forms of self-repair require regular repetition, they impose a rhythm to the week. Tuesday at 4 is when you get your hair cut by Janice. Wednesday at 7:30 is kickboxing with Mr. Kim.

Do we really need such commitments? We do them to enhance our feelings of personal competence and, sometimes, to experience social connection. That self-imposed “schedule” promotes the sense that we are the commanders of our own lives.