Comfort Through Rituals

As I was driving yesterday, I heard this NPR piece by Steve Inskeep and Shankar Vedantam about how rituals give us comfort and affect our enjoyment of food.

I talk with my students about building a routine with carrying their cameras, forcing themselves to make images. Over time, that routine – something I have told them they must do – turns to a ritual – something they feel they need to do. The science at play in that story is probably similar, that the familiarity of handling the camera increases the joy of making the images.