Bruce Feiler

We want different kinds of music.

If you can bury these tensions underground, the rituals surface the conflict and then help us resolve the conflict.

The ritual is a mechanism of compromise.

And that's, of course, exactly how groups stay together.

My wife's favorite chapter in A Time to Gather is called The Taylor Swift Divorce Party.

And it's about a woman who grew up, her parents and both sets of grandparents were divorced.

And she said, I'm not going to get divorced.

What happened?

You can imagine.

She grew up, had children, she got divorced.

And when her husband left, she put all the belongings in the middle of the, he took half the belongings, she took all the rest, and she gave them away to charity.

And she said, you know what I need right now?

I need a divorce registry because I need new plates.

I need new sheets.

I need a new toothbrush holder that every time I walk into the bathroom doesn't say, oh, loser, you're divorced.

And so she started the world's first divorce registry, and she realized that people wanted an occasion to mark this moment.

Because it was formerly a moment of shame and disgrace.

And she said, you can be unhappy that your divorce ended, but still not believe it's the end of your life.

And so she wrote a blog post called The Taylor Swift Divorce Party, where she served shake-it-off cupcakes and we are never, ever getting back together, you know, like had banners and cookies.

And she went online.