Life lessons from a cup of tea.

Chai or Indian tea involves more than dropping a bag of tea in boiling water and letting it steep for few minutes. My family’s daily tea was made by adding tea leaves to boiling water, filtering it, adding hot milk, and a few aromatic spices. Tea recipes varied among families although the basic ingredients remained somewhat the same. Tastes differed and everyone tweaked the recipe until they created one they liked.

Whether we choose to make an elaborate cup of tea or a simple, flavorful one with a tea bag, nothing beats making a fine cup of tea to suit our tastes. This applies to life too. Many spend most of their lives making tea based on someone else’s recipe. They might have started life that way for the minimum, guaranteed returns offered for serving tea to others. Somewhere along the way, they lost themselves. For this reason, they do it without much involvement. After all, it is not their cup of tea.  

Eventually, most start grumbling for the same reason. They exist in a twilight zone, dissatisfied and weary, even while enabling others to have their cup of tea and drink it too. They never move on because they make a choice not to. They inhabit this hazy zone, believing that this is ‘life’.

Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them! – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Besides, the tea lovers who benefit off the servers take great pains to impress that this sort of existence is a need. This insular zone (the zone) is important to them because it keeps others at their behest, while they focus on living out their best selves. The servers are important to their existence but never indispensable. The irony is that nobody or nothing is indispensable in this world. You only need flip a few pages in any history book for proof. The old order always changeth, whether you consider yourself a lord or a vassal.

You are the handicap you must face,
You are the one who must choose your place,
You must say where you want to go.  – Edgar Guest

In the meantime, though, the repetition of this great untruth until it sounds like a truth is so effective that many simply live out their lives in a hazy zone of gloom until they emerge, the sparkle gone from their eyes. They have lived much of their lives in settings where strangers have made key decisions on how they should spend their time. Unsurprisingly, the toilers declare that life is a burden precisely because they have no control over how they live it. They believe that life will eventually become bearable if they learn to endure this existence.

Bearable! Life is a profound gift meant to be lived with joy and lightness. What you do should enhance the quality of your life, not make it intolerable. However, most find it impossible to admit that this is because of their own choices. They have convinced themselves that nothing matters except those guaranteed, minimal returns. And that is what they get out of life itself – minimal returns.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! – Alfred, Lord Tennyson

What of those who enjoy the privilege of having their tea served? They get a lion’s share of the returns. Their privileged life is made possible because of those who serve them. They hurry around, bouncing from one activity to another. Very soon, they become completely dependent upon the external identity bestowed on them. This identity helps them remain impervious to the kind of life spent serving tea. That sort of existence is meant for the servers!

This unequal distribution of returns causes a chasm between them and the people who make this life happen for them. They too get sucked into the zone and soon become a part of it. This is a great tragedy because it is like sitting in a fabulous car, capable of great speeds, but never driving it beyond ten miles an hour. It is awful watching fresh, enlightened leaders sink slowly and stagnate inside a stale zone, chained by their external identities.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

In either case – regardless of the role one chooses to play – there are two striking similarities. One is that they prefer to spend their lives in busyness, without pausing to consider that life is finite. This is caused by a false sense of security offered by being inside the zone.

Another is that they try hard to compensate for whatever is missing inside by accumulating more. This accumulation becomes a furtive, futile pleasure for living a half-full life. Nothing satisfies them and they continue accumulating without need or meaning.

Where did the days go? The years? And why did I spend them the way I did? Did I create something that fulfilled me? Did I share my returns with others to help them find meaning in their own life journey? These questions converge as life moves inexorably towards its inevitable end, whenever that happens. If you act on these today, you can avoid the deep regret that will surface when you are even older.  

Creating your own cup of tea requires effort, experimentation, focus, and time. If you are lucky, you haven’t quite lost the touch and can continue from where you left off long ago. Make hundreds of thousands of cups of tea. Experiment. There is great joy in this process because it is helping you consider how you want to spend your remaining time on earth. What did you learn? What do you want to unlearn?

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass … – Walt Whitman

Expect to be filled with dread every time you attempt to step out but keep trying. One day, your unfounded fear will melt and you will breathe in fresh air. How different it is from the stale air inside the zone!  It welcomes you because there are so few out there, living on their own terms. You find rich pickings instead of the scarcity you were warned about. You are now living life the way it was meant to be, by continuing to learn instead of stagnating.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own. – Maya Angelou

Once you start creating your tea, you realize that nothing beats the joy of sharing it with others. Not because you have to or because you have no option but because you want to. People happen almost as soon as you start to experiment. The ones who know that life is finite and are searching to make meaningful contributions to the world. They don’t hesitate to schlep through dark swamps on their way to a lighter future. They even teach you to tweak your tea so it tastes even better. There might even be some from the zone, searching for their own answers.

And by the way, if you don’t like tea, try coffee. Or make your own pina colada. Maybe a unique mix of your invention that you want to share with the world? A brand new recipe? The choice is yours, in the time you have left.

Soul, take thy risk.
With Death to be
Were better than be not
With thee – Emily Dickinson