Some rituals have meaning beyond what can be fully appreciated by the outside observer. Like how Agatha Christie wrote her best mysteries while eating apples in the bath. How when Beethoven prepared his coffee each morning, he would count, one by one, exactly sixty beans for his cup. How the ancient Romans in the time of Caesar, prone to devise a ritual for almost every aspect of daily life, made a religious ceremony of their first shave—the depositio barbae. No matter how silly these behaviors may seem on the surface, doing them consistently can ground us, sooth our anxieties, and return us
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