Making Time for Tea

As I sip my tea this morning, I am faced with the message "say it straight, simple and with a smile" on the tag. My morning is often accompanied by thoughts like these or single words like "listen" and "enjoy." Though I often laugh it off, sometimes I cannot help but ponder the text as I sit. Why is my tea talking to me? Tea has always been thought to give messages through its leaves. Perhaps these little tags are meant to be an iteration of this tradition. Coffee does not talk. Rather, we grind it and hide it in a machine, absent from our finished product. Tea, on the other hand, we often let sit far beyond its advised amount of time. It dwells with us. We watch its leaves unfurl or the color change as the bag penetrates the water. And we are mesmerized. By giving us something to read, tea forces us to slow down and have a moment, if only for a moment.


America is a coffee culture. After all, we "run on Dunkin." What exactly does that phrase mean? That we are constantly on the move, needing to quickly get from one place to another, to quickly perform and produce, to stay awake. And we need caffeine and sugar to do that. Even coffee houses are often centers of productivity, and the beverages are just sweeter or more potent iterations of the same bean.

Do we as a culture then embody and enact Lera Auerbach's aphorism in Excess of Being, "we notice very little how little we notice," because we are always on the move?

What would it look like to be a tea culture? Perhaps we would pause more often, to let things steep. Not just the tea, but our own thoughts. Perhaps we would give ourselves time to actually think and notice, not just act. Perhaps we would be healthier. Herbal teas provide myriad benefits to our system, from immune support to liver detox to glowing skin. Perhaps we would be more conscious about what exactly we are putting in our bodies and what it can do for us besides keep us awake. Maybe it can even put us to sleep. Perhaps it would teach us to listen to others, even if the other is just a tea bag, and constructively engage with what they are saying, whether we agree or not.

Most importantly, perhaps it would help us to understand that progress and productivity do not need to happen at hyper speed to be fruitful. True progress is well thought, well planned, and well executed, and not at the expense of the mental or physical health of the individual or group. Unfortunately, it is difficult to change the mindset of a whole culture or society, but perhaps it can happen, one tea break at a time.