A while ago Rosa, my daughter, sent me a link to a powerful and moving talk by Taiye Selasi. Her (Taiye Selasi's) bio reads: born in london raised in boston lives in new york new delhi rome writes stories essays scripts + books makes pictures still + moving.
Selasi's talk is about rituals, relationships, and restrictions and how in her view these three things are what help define someone. Thinking of ourselves and others in these contexts rather than by nationality, race, gender, or other labels that get used for pigeonholing each other allows the emergence and recognition of a very different, and much more helpful, picture of someone's life, identity, and experiences.
Her talk came to mind last week when we celebrated my mother, Rosie's, 99th birthday in the usual UK traditional, ritualistic way. (Encyclopaedia Britannica describes 'ritual' as 'the performance of ceremonial acts prescribed by tradition'). She got birthday cards and gifts from well-wishers. She invited people to a lunch party with her. At this she had a cake with candles – and we are fortunate that they now make numerals and we didn't have to have 99 individual ones on the cake - we sang 'Happy Birthday', popped party poppers, and so on. As one of the 'ceremonial acts', she was invited to blow out the candles and cut the first slice of cake.