So – as a daily meditator, and secular spiritual seeker, I practice "being peace" in my daily life with varying degrees of success. Even though I read the book years ago, I still think of the concept all the time. Of being what you want the world to be, instead of demanding from the world the things that you want. Even though I am wording it a bit aggressively, think about it – people do it all the time. Imagine living your life in this framework: I want respect. Be respect. I want happiness. Be happiness. I want love. Be love. I want the world to be at peace. Be peace.

Now, I am trying to save for a decent down-payment on a mortgage while running my little marketing start-up. So – on top of being happy, being respectful, being peace etc. etc., I have to also practice being cheap. For example, tonight I made my own bread crumbs for my chicken dish with my bare hands instead of buying them from the store. This is amazing both because I am not going to a restaurant for my chicken and because I am thinking about the cost of ingredients. Being cheap in a lot of ways is being the change that I want to see in the world – since it is consuming less is environmentally sound.

Tonight I went out for tea – which was the most frugal thing I could think of. And – on the way I looked at all of the stores and restaurants – all begging for me to buy something – magazines, candies, drinks etc. etc. I looked at all of the chocolate things at the Starbucks asking to be bought. The chic brown boot and hat combination a woman was wearing were giving me clothes shopping ideas. People in warm restaurants eating fine foods and in bars sharing drinks, made me want the same. Day-dreams of the cute red car I want right now instead of my dented black VW were hard to suppress.

The flowers on the sidewalk outside of the store were beckoning me with their beauty – and dammit, I failed my little cheap mission and ended up getting some beautiful pink tulips to brighten up the apt – but $4.99 plus taxes isn’t bad compared to the car I am lusting after. I am understanding more and more about why people call shopping an addiction – one our whole city, country or even world is hooked on but no government wants to hold us back because consumer spending is so important to the economy. Well, maybe they want to hold us back if we are defaulting on our mortgage… or going bankrupt – but that is still the exception (I hope).

Yes, it is hard to be cheap in Toronto, the heart of Canada’s consumer economy – and I am sure it is the same in cities across the world. But if more of us practiced a bit of being cheap and stopped buying all that deliciously sexily attractive but unneeded stuff and gave the extra to loved-ones, investments, charity, the future, more free time, new creations etc… it could make quite a difference in the environment… and in lives. 

"Which road do I take?" she asked.

His response was a question: "Where do you want to go?"

"I don’t know," Alice answered.

"Then," said the cat, "it doesn’t matter."*

I like Alice. Having direction makes the thousands of choices that shape life easier to manage. After that it is a matter of self-control (an Achilles heel for me too ) and focusing on what is most important. Tall orders, both of them. Since many aspirations have some element of chance it is hard to put a time-limit on fulfilling them. You leave yourself open to the possibility of getting what you want rather than counting on a specific outcome. For years, I had a quote taped onto the side of my cubicle from actor Harrison Ford, which I now know by heart:

"Hard work and a proper frame of mind prepare you for the big break that finally comes along… or doesn’t".

*Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

This morning, after meditating, stretching and eating a healthy breakfast I was on my way for an early arrival at work when found that my car had been broken into. I tried putting my key in the lock, but it was tampered with – the vandals left a gaping hole where my lock used to be. I calmly checked:
- the ignition – no sign of further tampering
- my change for coffee – full amount accounted for
- my leather attache case from my sister- it was fine

Unsuccessful thieves – they must have called it a day before they had even finished the job. It surprised me since the car was in my underground garage, of my very secure building in a safe neighborhood in Toronto, one of the safest large cities in North America. I did nothing risky, I did everything right but I was still broken into.

I was at the VW garage and dealership for three hours watching images of poor Anna Nicole Smith, reading a business book and perusing the latest Jetta diesel models on display, then left several hundred dollars lighter and dutifully went to the office. And so it went. I went to work like a dutiful little lamb to begin paying the bill unfairly created by these unsuccessful thieves.

The Athenians used to believe that when they got sick, they were being punished by the Gods. That meant that they were hurt two-times – one for feeling regretful for what they had done, and two for actually being sick. I used to believe something similar – if I lived up enough to what I believed to be right, somehow I would be protected from the things that go wrong in life.

If I was
- smart enough
- loving enough
- hardworking enough
- disciplined enough
- compassionate enough
- healthy enough
- had enough of a sense of humor about things
…somehow I would build an impermeable shell around myself, protecting from painful and expensive happenings. These are my own versions of good but you can insert your own bullet points since this seems to be a common belief. But, how does that work? Who metes out the rewards and punishments? Since I don’t believe that cancer victims, people born in third-world countries and victim of crime "deserve it", there has to be some allowance for randomness.

So – if living up to your own values does not leave you impermeable and safe, what is the point to living up to them? It is the satisfaction of having lived up to them of course. Does that sound like too small a prize?

Some of the void has been filled by the educational ritual. It makes sense because education plays a more important role in today’s because of the information economy. Look at the educational coming of age surrounding the graduation from high school and the departure to University and College. Also,  look at the graduation ceremony itself with the traditional gowns and the convocation speeches launching the graduating class into the future. Secular people also venture into ceremonies when it comes to weddings and funerals.

But there are still many things that are left unmarked by ceremony and ritual. The academic and the traditional ones capture the relationships that are official, but most of us have a network of unofficial relationships and events as well. Most of our lives DO NOT only involve our partners, our families, our teachers and our classmates. What about our best friends and our colleagues? What about all of the significant events in our lives that go unmarked such as coming of age or the beginning and end of important relationships other than marriage?

For example, for me and everyone I know, High School or University/College was the place where they transitioned from being kid to being an adult. During that time, we chose our profession, lost our virginity, formed our "tribe" of friends etc. But, in the secular world, other than the "sweet 16" party, we have no ritual connoting the time when we go off into the world and become an adult. In other words, there is no secular bar mitzvah.

This means that when we go off into adulthood, it feels lonely and it is unclear what it means. An idea that my sister and I came up with to resolve this problem is having a party in the summer before each of her three kids go off to high school – marking the change in role that is coming, and supporting them throughout. This is much more broad than just the educational graduation ceremony; it is about the next big life step that they are going to take and the new role that they are going to embark on. 

Weddings are becoming and exaggeratedly important ritual. The wedding industry is booming (the average bride spends $800 on her dress alone) despite the changing role of wives in society. But, with the divorce rate being what it is, why isn’t there any ritual for divorce? I heard of a divorced women shredding all of the documents from her messy proceedings while drinking champagne with her friends – what a way to mark an end!

My friend and I have both recently gone through break-ups in relationships that were very important to us. To get closure, we burned their pictures and threw away their gifts – in fact I threw one of mine off of my apartment balcony, took a digital pic of the demolished item and distributed it to my friends and family. We also "christened"  them with new names (for example "Cheater") so it would be a constant reminder about what ended the relationship. There were also electronic rituals such as blocking them from e-mail, erasing all correspondence and removing them from MSN Instant Messenger.

So – it seems like in the absence of rituals for us secular, individualist folk, some of us are creating our own. As our world keeps changing and evolving, so can the things we put rituals around and how we mark them.