Tea: A Parable

Lately, I have had a bad habit of letting my favourite drink — hot tea, black — get cold.

It is unusual since sipping a cup of hot tea after sunrise is seemingly the only habit my unstructured day could hold on to.

I don’t know why I like tea that much. But there’s something soothing in drinking hot beverages in the morning. Especially when you wake up freezing (blame my air conditioning) and are greeted by a warm hug from your mug.

Of course, hot coffee or milk or even hot water could warm my mug the same, but tea’s just different. I’ll get a heart attack before lunch if I’m drinking hot coffee, I definitely would go back to bed if I’m drinking hot milk before even shower, and who likes to drink hot water anyway?

And here’s the best part; your favourite tea could be widely different from mine, even if we use the exact same brand.

Some of you might take it with sugar, milk, cream (I’m sorry, but I’ll just assume you must be rich if you use the cream for tea), or make it plain. Even the proportion of said sweeteners might be different between us.

For me: No sugar. Because you’ll get fat if you drink it with two teaspoons of sugars — just like my mom warned me. No man would approach a girl who got bloated because she — gasps! — drinks tea with sugar!

No sugar. Because you’re a responsible adult now, and you need to save up for a house mortgage, for your child expenses, for your parent's pension. So every penny — even the ones allocated for your sugar tea, is definitely needed.

And maybe, just maybe, saving up on sugar in tea is actually the secret key to retiring before reaching 30?

Sorry, I got sidetracked again. The point is, tea is special because it's special in different ways to different people.

For me, tea is kind of an anchor that I throw at myself every morning. An act of compassion that I could do to my own even if I hate myself that morning. It’s a silent reassurance that no matter how depressing and disappointing this day would end up, there’s still something warm that wait for me in the morning.

So, I still need to wake up tomorrow, for tea.

I perceive tea would help me distract my morning misery. And, in some backward logic, I need to maximize the joy derived just by one cup of beverage. I expect that perfect temperature; a warm feeling that reach your tummy and somehow clear your nose, but not too much that it left your tongue burnt.

I need to have That Perfect Tea Experience every morning.

I let it cool a bit because even after four minutes it’s still burnt my tongue if I tried to sip it. So, I would wait for another minute. or two. But more often than not, I missed.

Suddenly, it got a little too cool by several degrees, past my preferred temperature. And that decreased temperature also decrease my perceived joy of drinking tea; left me too disappointed to drink it at all, even.

And maybe, just maybe, this is precisely why I’m letting my tea get cold; day-old

Come to think of it, this has been a dumb reason; an anticlimatic epiphany; a lacklustre answer that would probably make you (or the you who somehow still read this) hate me for wasting your time. What’s the point of pointlessly ranting about tea?

But maybe, just maybe.

In your world; my tea would be your spouse, or your little sister, or your dream career. Anything that becomes the reason to wake up with a little enthusiasm every day.

But along the way, for all their significance, did you waste them cold in the effort to feel their warmth?