Family Ritual: Run, Breakfast and Boardgames

I like routines and rituals. For the past two years, our family has had a quarterly 5K run followed by a hearty breakfast. It is also a day when we play board games in the evening instead of our usual anime or video games. It gives us an opportunity to spend time together while doing something fun and healthy.

A quarterly event is easy to commit to, with flexible schedule. The activity is simple and it costs little. We usually have Ya Kun toast with coffee or milk tea, or a full English breakfast when we want something more substantial.

I think this is the kind of simple family ritual we will remember years from now. It also reminds me to treasure our time together. If we continue until my older boy turns 18, we have only about 25 more of these runs together. That makes each one feel a little more precious. Still, we can always come up with new rituals that we all enjoy.

Here’s Enuma Okoro on the road back to routine.

Excerpts:

Returning to the routine of life and away from summer fun is also returning to the recognition that most of life is less about holidaying and more about choosing the battles you’re willing to risk getting in trouble for — because you believe in whatever it is you’re committed to, be it a lifestyle, a political stance or simply making your voice heard in a society that’s always telling you to be “good” at any age.

…

This painting feels to me as much about our relationship with the season as it is a depiction of a landscape. As summer winds down and the days get shorter, it can feel as if we are losing a beautiful season. But Levitan’s painting reminds me that, as with much of life, when something ends there is always something else beginning. And even in the return to regular routines there will be encounters with many things and people that will offer us fresh and unpredictable experiences. What a stunning perspective this work offers us of the unknown possibilities that might lie ahead, even in the midst of the expected.

P.S. Routines may be good for our well-being. I’m not energetic by nature, and I generally feel better when I can stick to my routines, including getting some exercise every day.

P.P.S. Tim Urban on family time: “It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time.”