Today, in partnership with Masuno we are launching a series of small virtual rituals to share joys and sorrows.
Author: María Elisa Pinto García, executive director of the Prolongar Foundation.
Last year I had the wonderful opportunity to go to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. I was surprised at something that, despite the obvious, had not been obvious to me: humans are the only animals that use rituals and symbols. The first burials of our Neanderthal ancestors account for one of the most profound modifications that began to differentiate us from other species and is the need to explain our own existence through the imaginary, integrating cosmogonic myths into everyday life (National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico).
The ritual has several specific characteristics: it occurs in a space away from normal life; communicates through symbols, senses and emotions without necessarily depending on the use of the word; determines and supports change; it gives meaning to the world we live in.
Today, when that world is not the same, when our fragility is evident in everything we touch, when the things we took for granted are now our greatest desire, and when normal life seems like a perpetual present, it is vital that we create new rituals. Intimate rituals to explain our own existence and purpose. Shared rituals to live in solidarity and connect with others, in this interdependence that is no longer a theory but the forceful reality.
Today, in partnership with Masuno we are launching a series of small virtual rituals to share joys and sorrows. Rather than exhausting themselves in an exchange, they seek to be the beginning for the creation of symbols woven together, or to create rituals that make sense for each person. We begin by paying homage to what we long for, hoping that from this sharing will arise some hint of tranquility when we feel accompanied.