Empty rituals: Restoring Balance on Who You Ought to Be

There are perspectives that make sense as a collective agreement, and then there's the perspective that still echoes in your life, even when you don't fully understand why.

Since I was a kid, I always admired a certain state of being that I thought smokers had. It wasn’t about the act itself. I never actually liked smoking when I tried it. I just liked the way it looked. At some point, I wondered: Did they trick me? Or do I just not feel the same way? But revisiting this feeling now, I realize I tricked myself. What I was drawn to wasn’t the cigarette. It was a kind of soft dissociation, a state of being that I didn’t have the words for at the time. Something I now recognize as hypnagogia, the in-between state of awareness, or just the act of slowing down. And the truth is, you don’t need a cigarette to enter it. You can visit it at will through meditation, sensory reduction, breathwork, dream journaling.

They always say happiness isn’t a place. But for most of my life, I couldn’t even imagine my own way of enjoying a mindset. With ADHD, I assumed I'd always be stuck in the on-edge feeling life gives everyone. That I'd always be reaching. Think positive. Be ambitious. Try relaxing. Get in shape. But is that really what life is? Just asking for something at every turn, maintaining what others have done before you? Right now, to me, it isn’t.

The past few days, I’ve found more joy than I have in years, just slowly breathing and holding a toothpick like a cigarette. Not because I want to smoke again, but because my younger self wasn’t wrong for wanting that feeling. I just didn’t realize what I was really craving. I wanted to breathe slower. To relax, not as a temporary state, but constantly and consistently. That empty ritual, that in-between state, was the missing piece. And being in it, I feel at peace with everything. Music, media, conversations, myself, and whatever problems I thought I had.

I just wanted to share that. Not as some grandiose revelation found at the bottom of self-destruction or through a leap of faith. Just a quiet realization. My younger self’s need was lost in translation. I think I finally found a better answer to what I wanted from those smokers, or what costume I had for them.

It probably doesn’t mean the same for everyone. My friend, for example, finds that same clarity in the full wakefulness of an ice bath. As always, it’s just one perspective. My hope is that everyone finds their own version of this, a state of mind that brings them something better. Because at the end of the day, all of this around us is here to learn from—and coping is needing less.