The self, identity and meaning making

This middle step is sometimes called a “liminal phase,” and, in turn, the before and after are sometimes called the pre-liminal and post-liminal phases. Liminal comes from the Latin word for threshold. So ritual is a portal into another world. This is just as true for rituals that happen once a year—say, decorating the Christmas tree—as those that

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different

Rituals give form to the essential transitions of life. They are forms of closure. Without them, we slip through. Thus, we age without growing old, or we remain infantile consumers who never become adults.