Kumar
Contact me here
Subscribe
Subscribe to my syndicated feed.
- Feedback (1)
- First Thoughts (1)
- Personal (4)
- Quirks (1)
- Random (3)
- Recreation (2)
- Music (1)
- Television (1)
| Months | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 |
Tue, 07 Feb 2006
There are reasons, aren't there?
Original date: February 7, 2006
Do you wonder about rites, rituals, customs, etc? How do they get started and why do people continue doing them? There are reasons, I'm sure. The original reasons are almost always lost and they become things that people do. Habits.
Oftentimes, the value changes too. They still have utility, just not the original one. That doesn't matter so much.
Other things that aren't rituals that are still habits are very interesting in their own way. People classify them as good habits, bad habits. Some even call them unavoidable habits. Now that's an addiction, for sure, even if it isn't harmful to the person doing them or to others. I'm losing track of my main issue here. Let's get back to that.
A couple of things triggered this. My habitual behaviour under certain circumstances, be they riding the bus, reacting to certain things and even in certain ways in meetings and with certain people. Or even talking to myself and it comes out aloud once in a while. Doesn't that happen to you? Are you embarrassed when it does? Even if no one was around to notice? Now, what does it mean if you're not embarrassed even if people are around and noticed. Most of the time, people pretend that they didn't notice anything anyway.
The main thing that triggered this thought process was the coverage of a funeral of a famous person today. It was an important person. But why the ceremony? It certainly is a celebration of the life. Making their family feel (or only now realize) how important this person was is certainly one of the reasons. Setting an example for others is another. Hopefully, it their greatness that would inspire people and not the fact that there was such a big deal made about them. It doesn't even matter as long as they actually do good things that benefit others.
I started doing some web searches on funerals and found a large body of work related to this.Here's a good quote: "The funeral declares that a death has occurred. It commemorates the life that has been lived, and offers family and friends the opportunity to pay tribute to their loved one." (source: http://familyestate.com/main/funeral.html) Many of these talk about closure, acceptance, etc. Those most of us recognize. Most of these views are from sites that provide services for funerals.
I really liked this article entitled "why funerals?" from a group called American Society for Aging.It is interesting that none of these articles (at least the few that I read) talks about setting an example and that's the most obvious one to me.
We need to have some semblance of a feeling of control over our lives. That's the reality we understand, need for our sanity. Ignoring them is always an option, I suppose. "what you don't know won't hurt you" is a common expression. Trust me, I don't know many cases when that's remotely true. What you don't know comes back to bite you most of the time.
Yes, there had better be reaons.
[/Personal/Random] Permanent links: This day w/ this entry
Copyright © 2006 S. Kumar
