National Brotherhood Week

Living in the South I take certain things for granted, such as iced tea will always be sweet, grits are for breakfast, and the people are friendly. This last one is something that I think more of us Southerns take for granted than we realize. On several trips up North to visit family, my family and I have walked into any number of McDonald’s on a bathroom break and been surprised – if not shocked and embarrassed for the person behind the counter – when we witness an angry customer yelling at the poor clerk. We don’t know why but there they are, yelling like the person behind the counter just insulted their grandmother.

And what is the first thing I do? I check the accent. I know I shouldn’t but every stereotype as a grain of truth in it. Rarely does this person sound like they are from the South. (Although, neither do I - even with two Yankee parents you would think that having grown-up in the South I would have developed a slight accent but no; I remain accent free.) Northerners are known – in the South, anyway – for being loud and unpleasent, not that we don’t have our moments but football is a big deal down here.

My family and I get to our destination and spend a few days with our Northern half and sometime time during our stay it will happen. Whether we are walking down the street or in a store, I will make eye contact with someone and smile or wave because that’s what you do. If you make eye contact you acknowledge the other person and move on. My cousins can never understand this phenomenon.

“Do you know them?” one of them will say.

“Well, no,” I say.

“Then why did you wave?”

“Because we made eye contact and it was the nice thing to do?”

Their amazement at this gesture baffles me but then I think back to the angry Northerner in the McDonald’s and in my head I say, “Oh yeah.” Once again, I know I shouldn’t make this assumption. I love my Northern family and I have been in plenty of places in the North where the people are just as friendly as back in the South. So why do I automatically try to hear the accent in the angry customer at McDonald’s?

Stereotypes are based mostly on the bad qualities of a certain group of people. Rarely do stereotypes – or at least the ones I am aware of – focus on the good aspects of the human condition. Chances are that it has more to do with the history between certain groups of people. I am no history major so I will not begin to try to guess what those histories are but it makes sense. We see one individual and judge them either based on looks or their accent or any number of other things about them that are only evident from the outside.

This week is National Brotherhood Week. Some of you have perhaps heard the song by Tom Lehrer with the same title; Lehrer’s song satirizes the week (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGGMi0fTXvA – don’t listen to this song in a public area unless you are prepared to explain yourself) but I think there is something to be gained from celebrating this week. After all, how can you make connections with people if all you are doing is silently judging them because they come from a different part of the country than you? You can’t. So put aside the prejudices and ask them if they want a cup of tea. Whether they like it sweet or unsweet, hot or cold, they are human beings and so are you.

Connecting Through Tea

Recently, a friend of mine, L.H.L (Have a Sole.) posted a blog about how people have become disconnected with each other. This she feels – and correct me L.H.L if I am getting this wrong – is because of society getting away from the arts and the connections it can create between people. One of her suggestions on how to rekindle these connections was drinking tea with a friend. My comment on this was, “Tea is duct tape for the soul! I have had many wonderful conversations with friends and family over a steaming cup of tea. The art of conversation is slowly dying out and I feel it's due to technology. Everyone feels they have to be plugged in all the time.” And this is true. If you are a user of something like Facebook you have perhaps heard the joke, “We’re actually friends if we’re not friends on Facebook!” But I don’t want to talk about technology anymore. I want to focus on tea.

The thing about tea is it slows you down, whereas technology is associated with being fast-paced. Most tea has less caffeine in it than coffee - unless you're drinking Gunpowder Green Tea and then don't expect to be taking a nap anytime soon. You don’t drink coffee to relax. There is caffeine free coffee but what’s the point? Most people I know don’t drink coffee for the taste – though, there are some of these kinds of people out there and if you are one of them please enlighten me. Tea has a calming effect whether it's chamomile or, my personal favorite, rooibos. It’s good for the soul when it feels like your soul is in a million pieces. Tea is duct tape for the soul.

“CZB II, why tea?” You may be asking. I will admit that I have not always been a fan of tea. Had I grown up in England perhaps my taste for it as a child would have been more favorable but when I was younger I never thought it tasted particularly good. Now I realize this has more to do with the fact that my older brother never used honey in his green tea which left the natural bitter taste more than anything. Children don’t like bitter things. I digress… back to the point.

I discovered my love for when my younger brother died. A friend brought over a box of assorted teas and we sat in my room, drinking tea and remembering the good times we had all done together. Ever since then tea has been a way for me to connect with the people I love. Everyone who knows me knows that I love sharing my tea as much as drinking it. Last year the husband of someone I know died. The two of us weren’t particularly close but having gone through a similar crisis of my own I knew what it was like to feel you couldn’t relate to anyone. I found a small box and decorated it with tea quotes and filled it with my favorite teas. I wrote her a short note about why I was giving her the tea and that I hoped she passed on tea in a similar fashion when someone she knew was going through something similar.

This past Christmas I got a letter from her saying she had passed some tea onto a friend of hers whose husband had also died. In a letter to her friend she told her about how I had given her tea and the origin of the tea giving. She told her friend to pass on the tea the way I had told my friend to do the same. This touched me; not only had I made a connection with this woman but I was now, through her, connected to someone I didn’t even know and it wasn’t because we had mutual friends on YourFace or were tagged in a note that listed 25 things people didn’t know about someone they thought they knew.

I may never meet this other woman but by touching the life of some I do know I was able to help her. Life is about human connections. It’s not just having tea with a friend either. It’s touching someone else’s life. You may not even realize you have made a difference but by helping one individual you have made them able to help someone else. By making these connections we make ourselves stronger, too, so when we are having those days when we feel we can’t relate to anyone we can remember the people who touched us and know that we’re not alone.

So go have a tea with someone you love and make the connection.