I leave home, put on my headphones, and press play on the playlist I prepared yesterday. That small gesture, anticipating the music that will carry me to work, is a ritual. It does not change the world, but it changes my day: it reminds me I am in charge of my own tempo. And yet, the immediacy surrounding us tries to erase even that. Spotify already suggests a “Daily Mix” to save me the “trouble” of choosing, as if picking what to listen to were a waste of time.

That is what is happening: efficiency stole our rituals.

And I do not mean solemn ceremonies. I mean the little things: knowing your neighbors, borrowing a cup of sugar, saying hello in the elevator. Micro-choreographies that gave urban life texture. Today, your neighbor is more likely to show up on your Glovo screen as “assigned courier” than as someone who shares your hallway.

Durkheim said rituals were the glue of community; Victor Turner spoke of communitas, that almost mystical sense of union. But now, the closest thing we have to a collective ritual is everyone complaining at the same time when the WiFi goes down.

Here is the provocation: rituals were not a waste of time, they were the factory of meaning. Waiting, repeating gestures, small interactions… they reminded us we were not alone. Today, efficiency sells us free time, but delivers it empty.

Barthes said love lived in waiting; Byung-Chul Han repeats that our accelerated society breeds exhaustion. I would say that without rituals, we have become addicted to “skip intro”. We want to jump straight to the good part, but what is left when everything is “the good part”? A life in fast forward where intimacy never gets cooked.

The loss of rituals is not harmless. It has consequences: it leaves us lonelier, more anxious, less capable of building community. Without rituals, life fragments into isolated events that do not add up to history or belonging. We see it in politics, where without shared symbols social cohesion crumbles; in urban life, where cities become anonymous and hostile; in intimacy, where relationships are consumed like products. Without rituals we do not just lose shared time, we also lose collective memory, trust, and even the ability to imagine a “we.”

The ultimate irony: modernity promised us connection but left us in apartments where we do not even know the neighbor next door. If borrowing salt is no longer possible, what kind of community are we building?

Perhaps the truly radical act today is to waste time: to wait without anxiety, to cook without hurry, to let the awkward silence linger. To reinvent rituals as resistance against the loneliness disguised as efficiency. Because if not, the only thing we will ritualize is the infinite scroll.