Incorporate it into the ritual
A wise parable from Kafka
Years ago when I was only just beginning the work of standing my sacred ground, my supervisor at the time shared with me a parable of sorts by Franz Kafka.1
“Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.”
At the time, I felt emboldened by these leopards. They didn’t cower to the powers trying to get them to be less leopard-like. They kept showing up, doing what leopards do. Everyone else learned to adjust. The leopards didn’t apologize for being leopards or try to change their nature. They stood their ground and the community around them learned how to pivot so that the leopards could keep being leopards.
I aspire to be a leopard.
In the seven or so years since I first heard this parable, I feel like I’ve come a long way. I am definitely more leopard-like than I was then. But in the words of a dear friend, I recognize, too, that there are days when I feel like I am leopardish and am really just a house cat. I sometimes worry that I will do something too fierce, too “big cat,” and he reminds me that my nature, even then, is to be nurturing and gentle, and it would be a rare, unlikely experience for me to be a carnivorous killer. I wasn’t offended, much as I’d like to be a killer sometimes. I heard it as encouragement. Standing my ground is not nearly as brash as I think it is. So I keep standing. I keep breaking into the temple in my own gentle way.
These days, however, I feel like the vessel. I am being drunk to the dregs by leopards.
I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to prevent the leopards (read: schedules, children, schooling, executive tasks) from disrupting my flow, much as it keeps happening. I try to blockade the doors, build traps, and reconfigure the temple to preserve my own sanity, to leave room for my dreams to grow. In the end, those endeavors of protection have failed and I am even more tired than when I began.
In recent years, the wisdom of “incorporate it into the ritual” has become a mantra. I’ll give you some examples of how this looks practically. These are not rocket science but the shift toward working with the stream instead of against it has made a significant difference in my life.
My children’s school let’s out at 3:30pm, and their after school care options are inconsistently available this year. I usually work 8-4:30, and some days I could count on working my full shift but there were many where I had to leave work early to pick them up. Last year I carried so much anxiety and extra mental load around how to make up those hours. This year, I adjusted my work schedule and now work 7-3:30 most days. I did not want to do this. I do not enjoy going to work that early. But that adjustment has been much gentler on my psyche than worrying about my work time. I incorporated their schedule into my ritual.
I have always worked best under a sense of pressure or urgency. All of my school papers were written within days of their due date, no matter how much advance notice I had. I have spent the better part of two decades shitting on myself for this, trying to rewire my brain to work ahead, avoid stress, and be more responsible(!!). Over the last year I finally looked at this part of how my brain works with a dose of compassion. I was creating more friction for myself by trying to work ahead on sermons and work projects specifically. My brain simply does not enjoy having a languid, easy time. Relaxed? Couldn’t be me. I’ve now embraced my need for urgency as part of my ritual. That urgency presses me to do my best work, and it’s okay for me to name and own that. I don’t have to try to change it. I build my work week and home tasks to leave time the day before a task is due, rather than try to do it ahead of time, and my anxiety has decreased significantly.
This example is something I saw once in my friend Mendy’s home. It is so simple yet so genius. Nestled on her living room end table, amongst her lamp, coaster, and a candle is a small container with her daughter’s hair brush and hair ties. At first it seemed out of place, especially for dear Mendy who keeps an aspirational, beautiful home. But then I realized… they must do L’s hair here every morning before school. Why keep these things in the bathroom when this is where the ritual of hair care lives? They’d just be creating more work for themselves every single day to move the supplies back and forth. Instead, Mendy found a container and left it where it gets used. Would we see this in a Martha Stewart home design magazine? Probably not. But it was the most homey, welcoming aspect of her living room to me and has stayed in my mind all these years later. Our homes are not magazine features. They are where real, family life occurs. We all ought to be incorporating our rituals into our homes rather than building rituals around our homes. Mortgage and rent is expensive! Why not make them work for us?
These are very practical ways I’ve learned to incorporate tasks into the ritual of my life, but I’m also working toward incorporating my ideas, feelings, and beliefs into the ritual of myself. Does that make sense? What parts of ourselves do we try to work and re-work, build or tear away, when we could instead incorporate into the ritual of how we spend our days? How does naming those difficulties, whatever they may be, open us up to compassion and empathy that we’d otherwise miss? Taking it a step further… who are the leopards in our lives that threaten to disrupt the ritual? How can we incorporate their nature rather than try to avoid it?
I’m curious if this resonates with you and if you have examples of how you’ve incorporated something (or someone) difficult into the ritual rather than trying to change the ritual.
My next task is to figure out where to incorporate writing my book into the ritual. You may have noticed I stopped tracking my book word count in these posts, and well, that’s because I’m not writing my book. By the time I finish writing on Substack on Fridays, my brain is ready for something else. But I do still very much want to write this book that is pressing the seams of my heart, trying to get out. Where in my ritual can I build in a second time to write each week? There’s no need for me to be hard on myself about it or turn my whole week upside down to fit it in. But there is probably a nook or cranny somewhere that I can habit stack the ritual of writing with some other ritual I’m already practicing.
I am so appreciative of the texts, comments, and emails you send each Friday. This ritual has become so very dear, and as an extroverted enneagram four, it delights me to know that my desire to share about my life is being met with people who want to hear about it.
Today’s post is brought to you by the half-sweet vanilla cardamon latte at Chingu Coffee in West Plaza. I wish I had time to stay for a Bay Boy sandwich next door! Next time.
See you next Friday,
Janette
P.S. If you liked this post, tapping that little heart icon goes a long way to helping me grow my readership which might help me publish a book one day. Any engagement helps, and I appreciate you for being here!
https://bookshop.org/p/books/zurau-aphorisms-franz-kafka/17273919
I love this leopards aphorism and I didn’t know about it until you shared it with me. So, thanks! Also, I didn’t know you were writing a book and now I can’t wait to read it. Cheers to incorporating it all into the ritual.
This is a good word.