In order to help ourselves change, we must become aware that breaking from our normal ways of being is what makes it possible to develop different sides of ourselves. Rituals—in the Confucian sense—are transformative because they allow us to become a different person for a moment. They create a short-lived alternate reality that returns us to our regular life slightly altered. For a brief moment, we are living in an “as if” world.
—Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Lo, The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life
