Pomp and all That

Yesterday was my final coaching class and graduation ceremony. We’ve been studying together, some twenty six or so of us, since March in what became a very close-knit group, so it was a joyous occasion with lots of cheering and shouting and all that. There were ritual components of the ceremony, and we brought to it a certain serious attitude, as you’d expect.

Why do we do this? What’s the point? People feel a need for closure and completion, but what is that in essence? To simply receive a certificate in the mail would surely be proof of completion enough for anyone to understand.

But I think there are aspects of ourselves that don’t understand the certificate in the mail, or the idea that we’ve finished. There are aspects of our souls that can’t read, or understand speech. But these parts understand hard work, and endeavoring to do something important. They understand human connection, and also the separation of that connection.

Do these parts of us understand ceremony and ritual? It seems they do. There is a part of us that seems to crave a certain amount of repetition; a part of us that instills ritual in even mundane actions and events. This part of us may be deeper than we realize.

We naturally have ceremonies for certain group events, or powerful single events - deaths, anniversaries, graduations. But there are completions we all have privately, or not so privately; finishing a novel or a painting, the death of a dear companion animal, or breaking apart from a romance. What ceremonies should we have for these?