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.