It’s not just the declining number of marriages that shows that rituals are disappearing from our lives – and with them opportunities to pause or conclude. What remains is a nervous society.
On the third day of the lavish wedding and love festival that sets an entire village in motion, the bride pauses for a brief moment and thinks: “Is it really right to invest so much time and energy to celebrate a celebration? To set so many people and resources in motion when there are completely different construction sites in our world right now?” The first reflex is to agree with her: Sure, we should all be working every second now to ensure more peace and less CO₂ comes into the world. But a few thoughts further and things look different: the world needs celebrations like this love festival right now. Just as landmarks give us orientation in the outside world, they give us orientation in the time we experience.