Rituals Are are Important to Warriors and Doing Them Should be Important to You

by Michael Kurcina August 12, 2022

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

The need for ritual is a basic human instinct. Though it varies from place to place performing rituals is a feature known to all human societies. Rituals may include complex worship rites, rites of passage, oaths of allegiance, sporting events, and may be as simple as preparing a morning cup of coffee.

The English word "ritual" comes from the Latin ritualis, "that which pertains to the rite (ritus). Much has been written on what rituals are and have been and there really is no limit to the kinds of actions that may be incorporated into a ritual.

Rituals simply help us stay connected to the infinite. Whether we use special words or gestures, whether we comb hair like the Spartans did before battle, whether it is done communally or in solitude, it comes down to performing some kind of structure that lets us feel connected to the universe.

Rituals add depth and drama to our lives and are important to enact as each action performed provides a focal point from outer distraction. By implacing ourselves into the moments of the ritual we are displacing, in some sense of the idea, chaos from our life. We are achieving attunement and bringing ourselves into a place of harmony. Preparatory activities induce a feeling of being in control in moments where we may feel uncertainty. Rituals may reduce anxiety or boost our confidence.

Anthropologists have documented rituals across cultures. Today we know that performing rituals help people feel less grief from loss, help people feel more confident when outcomes are uncertain, and all people perform some kind of ritual. Fathers take their sons camping or hunting yearly, or soldiers give a toast to fallen warriors on the anniversary of the dead warrior's last day of life. Performing rituals can stem the feeling of regret from creeping up on us.

Before setting out to battle, warriors such as the Spartans or the samurai, would partake in farewell rituals. For the samurai as battle neared a warrior would drink a cup of sake, known as the Bushi-Nin Sake Ritual, with his comrades and then seek either victory or honorable death in combat. This practice was performed by kamikaze pilots during World War II.

Although their hair was shorter than the hair of warriors from other armies and not elaborate a common practice for the Spartans was to pay careful attention to their hair when they were about to risk their lives. They also wrestled before battle.

The Maori people of New Zealand performed the haka, a traditional war cry or war dance, before a battle to proclaim their strength and prowess in order to intimidate their opponents. Below is a haka performed in one of my favorite movies Once Were Warriors.

Gregory Gibson wrote an interesting little piece on it here. The Heke family are displaced and the central character Jake the Mus (muscle) is a displaced warrior who has lost the ways of his people. Because Jake forgot the ways and rituals of his people he can only find expression through violence. His violence tears his family apart. One of Jake's sons Nig follows his father's ways by joining a gang and the other son Boogie is close to getting there. In the movie Boogie learns to do Haka at the juvenile detention center. He begins to grow as a boy into a man.

Rituals are predictable, structured parts of everyday life. Rituals may be sacred or secular. Rituals might pull people together or apart. Rituals can help build connections, give a group its own sense of personality, and reinforces the group’s values. When a group loses a member the ritual can bring them deeper together. One of the most incredible sights to behold is the most sacred of the U.S Army’s changing of the guard ritual at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

There are some very basic rituals for morning, midday and evening such as brushing your teeth, having a cup of coffee or having power lunch with your team.

For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?

One of the most interesting of all poems comes from the master himself, T.S Eliot, who wrote the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock is an emotionally and spiritually paralyzed man. He has no intellectual or physical inertia either, but why? The character is a man of thought and not a man of action.

He laments lost opportunities, he is haunted by failure, is weary, regretful, and frustrated. He is aware of his own mortality but does nothing about it. He is a detached soul who cannot identify with society because he rejects the structure of society. He is an outsider looking in.

Because he rejects his existence as false yet wanting to remain true to himself he has placed himself in an existential conundrum. There is no escape for men like Prufrock. Because he is detached from life it becomes his hell and nothing, not even love, can rescue him. Prufrock is an observer doomed to feel alone.

Rituals are a form of structure that makes life flow more easily. Write letters to a friend, or attend a ceremony. You must ultimately decide what rituals are indispensable to your life. One of the best things you can do is spend five minutes every day reflecting on all the things you have to be grateful for. Perhaps you enjoy a quiet cup of Silencio coffee while reading the newspaper or take some quality time walking your dog. Spend time visiting your fallen friend at his police memorial every year. Whatever you choose to do, please stay connected.

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

	S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
	A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
	Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
	Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
	Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
	Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . . . . .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.	125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.