Meditation #1

 

At first, ‘designing a ritual was a concept that I could not fully grasp. Before taking the class, I have not even thought of the word ‘ritual’ in-depth — I only associated the word with a religious tone, assuming that any rituals had to be something related to religious practice. 

However, after learning the taxonomy of rituals, I realized that a ritual isn’t exclusive to religious purposes. It can be rites of passage, seasonal, political, religious, and interpersonal. What was interesting to me was that I was already familiar with the examples of each ritual category — I just never thought of them as rituals. For example, elections and parades were definitely events and human behaviors that I was familiar with. However, before learning about ritual taxonomy, I did not know that I could categorize those behaviors as rituals. Learning about the types of rituals opened my eyes to see so many of our human daily life behavior as a ritualistic approach, which was both intriguing and odd. 

Starting My First Meditation Journey:

With an open mindset, I started to brainstorm what I do as a ritual in the physical world, and I jot down some ideas and how they make me feel or why I do them (some of them have a question mark because I am not sure why or how). I thought, ‘maybe if I think of analogic rituals, I could turn them into digital rituals’ : 

• • • writing diaries when feeling down (more like ranting to myself)
      • • feels validating? 
    • clicking the same button multiple times
      • • makes me think that it’s going to make a process faster?
    • putting on perfume or brushing my bangs
      • • makes me feel comfortable with how I present myself to others — I feel more confident 
    • reciprocating yawning or checking time
      • • provides a sense of community and belongingness?  

However, I wasn’t very fond of these ideas — they seemed too basic, and I did not want to settle with the very first ideas that I had. So I decided to take more time to reflect and think. 

As a result, my second option was having a love-language ritual on the internet. As silly as it sounds, I even thought about perhaps dating an online person on my gaming platform. This could’ve been a real person or one of those 2D Anime boyfriends: Choose Your Own Adventure! Type of game.

Though the idea of it sounded fun, one, I thought it was a bit too weird to flirt with strangers online in my gaming platform (I play Super Animal Royale and Animal Crossing, so all characters are animals), and 2D anime dating took a little too long to get enough ‘affection points’ for me to date them. So I decided to give myself more thought. 

Then a couple of days ago I was calling my friend, and with a pen and paper in front of me, I just started to take notes and doodle — similar to how people walk around when they talk. This behavior has been influencing me for as long as I remember. It seems to provide me comfort, or a sense of ease, while I call. It keeps my hand and eyes busy, while my mind and mouth can concentrate on the call. Maybe this is because I have a hard time just sitting down and talking. This might be why I hate movie theaters: I have to sit still for two hours. Taking ‘notes’ and doodling entertains multiple senses of my body, which helps me feel focused and not bored. 

Notes and Doodling:

It really is interesting — I distinctively remember witnessing my mother draw the most random shapes with faces and wings when she called; I was around seven or eight when I saw my mother doodling while calling. Maybe the younger me thought, ‘wow! that is one cool activity to do’ when I first encountered doodling. Or, maybe I wanted to impersonate my mother (who I look up to back then and now) to get a greater sense of connection to my mother (maybe this is a social bonding instinct?). Whatever the reason may have been, it stuck with me for over a decade, and I still find myself taking notes and doodling on many occasions. 

At first, I did not make much meaning into it. However, I was walking back from one of my morning classes thinking of what a ritual was, and I thought about which of my behaviors make me feel a certain way. What were the repeated actions in my everyday life that were considered ‘purposeful’? When I got home, I pulled out my notebook to review some notes — and upon seeing my doodles for the second time, I realized that this was an analogic ritual that I participate in almost every time I call someone. 

With this idea in mind, I started to digitalize my ritual, and these were the two approaches that I had: 

• • facetime while I show the other party the notes that I’m taking physically 
  • zoom call with my friend and screenshare the notes I take digitally 

The first option did not seem too digital — in the end, the only digital transaction was me being on the phone, and I didn’t feel that it was a fully immersive digital experience. The second option was going to be my resort, but the laptop and broken last Thursday, and I did not own a stylus, so I decided to look for an alternative option. Therefore, with the only functioning device that I have being my phone, I decided to call my friend, screen record my phone, while sharing a miro board with my friend. 

DIGITALIZATION?:

Thankfully, there was a miro board app that I could download onto my phone, so I proceeded to do that. We called, and I started to jot down notes. At first, it was a bit odd and uncomfortable — it felt weird to write things with my finger rather than a pen. I couldn’t record the actual voice call, but I thought it would also be interesting to see what people assume the conversation topics were purely based on my notes and doodles. Here I am on a call with my friend, Tom, and the 20-minute conversation that I had with him is all digitally (and visually) recorded on this video: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F_aB_aEPmzXAuAJNeBvXF9VcFUvkATTT/view?usp=sharing

What was accomplished? 

Through digitalizing my doodling ritual, I realized my tendency to disassociate while doing an activity that only utilizes one part of my body/sense. Although I don’t particularly think that getting ‘distracted’ is a negative thing, I do think it portrays my strengths and weaknesses. For example, I think my behavior shows that I am capable of doing multi-functioning things at once, or I enjoy participating in activities that I can truly give all that I have to. In other words, I strive to not only contribute mentally (‘intellectually’) but also physically (hard labor). Nevertheless, others may view it from a negative perspective and comment on my lack of ability to focus on one simple task. To be frank, I can’t really argue with that side either. However, I do think the reason why I get distracted doing a simple task is that it bores me in a way — I need something to stimulate multiple parts/senses of my body. 

Regardless, both physical and digital rituals of doodling had the same effect on my body. Both provide me a sense of ease and entertainment or this feeling of being occupied. I can’t solidify exactly how I feel when I do these, but I think I might be enjoying the feeling of being ‘busy,’ which then my brain translates to work being done. Therefore after finishing the call, I would have a greater sense of achievement — this feeling of getting more things done in a limited time, or this feeling of getting two birds with one stone (although I’m really not getting anything practical done). Then, because I enjoy this sensation, I repeatedly generate these “behavior with intention”, which then creates this positive feedback loop that has been affecting my mind and body for at least a decade.- 

It was also intriguing to see how my friend was interacting with my behavior. Contrary to when I doodle on a physical paper (where no one but me can see it unless I decide to share), sharing my semiconscious thought process with another person gave me a different sensation.  I didn’t particularly feel like I was being watched. However, my friend did ask from time to time about why I made certain chooses, like why I chose to write down a word or why I chose to draw a worm in the color purple (p.s. we were not talking about worms). These questions made me reevaluate the unconscious choices that I was making, which was an interesting self-reflection that I’ve never really done before. The digitalization of my ritual made it possible for me to somewhat ‘interact’ with an audience and publicizing my ritual gave me a lot of thrill in a way because I felt like I was opening up something private that I’ve never really shown to anyone.