The Rituals That Keep Chaos in Check

Filed under: Personal Growth

These are the markers that tell me where I am…

It’s after seven in the morning as I write this, and the sky is still dark over Bob Lake, but growing light in the east. From my vantage point on the couch with my iPad, I can see the smooth gray and red sky, reflected in the icy water, separated by the black gash of hills and forests that split the horizon.

I’ve been living here since July, and as my unavoidable return home and the drive back to Toronto looms, I find myself reflecting on the past few months I’ve spent in what’s known as the Great White North.

And as I consider the date, I begin to tick off a mental list of markers. These are the meaningful points that show me where I am in the flow of the year.

It’s a kind of ritual for me. I suspect it is for you, too.

As a young boy, my markers were large and few:

Birthday, end of the school year, summer vacation, Canadian National Exhibition, back to school, Hallowe’en, Christmas.

Repeat.

As an adult, I have more markers than ever. They don’t just track the passage of the year; they reflect the rhythm of my time here at the cabin. In fact, I now have more markers for this short northern stay than I used to have for an entire year when I was a boy.

But here’s what’s essential. Markers don’t maintain themselves.

Rituals are the actions that keep them alive.

The two are connected. The markers matter because of the rituals that sustain them. And the rituals matter because they point to something greater than the act itself. Together, they form a kind of path to New Year’s Eve, 2025.

And that’s what makes them meaningful. They tell me where I am.

Some markers in our lives are obvious and monumental. Graduation. A wedding. A long-dreamed-of trip.

But I’ve come to believe that it’s the smaller, recurring ones that give our lives shape and meaning day to day.

These are the rituals we perform regularly. They give the year structure and keep us grounded in both where we are and where we’re headed. By noticing and honoring these small milestones, we come to appreciate our lives in their steadiness and in their change.

Here at the cabin, the rituals are what preserve the marker stones on my path.

Walking the Minden boardwalk along the Gull River.

Lighting a campfire on the beach beneath a starry sky.

Catching a live theatre performance in Bancroft.

The annual trip to Dairy Queen.

Then there are the carefully planned restaurant visits, a perfect (if expensive) solution to the no-dishwasher problem.

Each of these things may seem simple. But they matter because they are the rituals that preserve the markers.

Rituals bring rhythm to life. They keep things sane. They’re how we mark time and make sense of it.

When we hit a marker, we get to orient ourselves. Like finding the YOU ARE HERE arrow on a mall map, it helps us understand where we are in the journey. That kind of structure is something we need. Because no matter how much order we create, chaos eventually finds its way in.

A child leaves for university and a parent becomes an empty nester. After years of work, retirement arrives. Or a health scare appears, dragging a heavy sense of uncertainty.

Rituals give us something to hold onto. They help us process change. They give us a sense of what we NLPers call being “at cause” instead of “at effect.” A feeling of agency, even if it’s mostly an illusion. They help fill the space left by markers that have crumbled or disappeared with time.

The sun is rising now over the escarpment, and the cabin is starting to warm. I just finished one of the rituals that gives meaning to my mornings up here. I tossed scoops of peanuts onto the road for the dozen blue jays that show up daily, and a special handful for Crackle, my crow friend, who returns each year with his murder of crows for breakfast on the beach.

Some of the old markers up here are gone forever.

My brother-in-law Bruce, who we lost when he drowned in a riptide in Cuba, is no longer puttering around the boat or the garden. I still expect to see him, but of course I don’t.

Smaller markers have vanished too. The 50s Diner in Minden, where I used to get a proper breakfast, is closed. So is the Rockcliffe in Moore Falls, which took with it not only good food, but the familiar servers we came to know as friends.

But life doesn’t just erase. It replaces.

New markers appear, often without warning.

This year, I'm watching an absurd amount of gut-wrenching Toronto Blue Jays baseball on my iPad. That seems to have nudged aside the reading poetry and literature marker, at least for now.

Still, the trees have put on their reds and golds. That marker always arrives. It sets the mental stage for the drive home, where the familiar Toronto rituals will resume and the city’s markers will reappear, right on time.

And that matters. Because in NLP terms, markers are anchors. They hold emotional states. They connect us to memory and meaning, the way a song from high school can drop you back into the feeling of being seventeen again.

I think I’ll revisit an old marker when I get home.

I haven’t watched To Kill a Mockingbird in years. It’s Gregory Peck’s greatest work. Its quiet portrayal of integrity and its scathing look at racism still deserve to be seen. I think I’ll sit down with it again before the snow arrives.

So what are your markers?

And what rituals do you practice to keep them alive?

It’s worth asking, and worth answering. Bring the answers to the surface and hold them in your conscious awareness.

Because when you know your markers, and you know the rituals that support and sustain them, you give yourself access to memory, emotional clarity, and most of all meaning.

And that brings a kind of order.

The kind that keeps chaos in its place.

- Mike Mandel

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