Tea Alchemy

I wrote about something the other day and as always, Sir William joined the party. However, the rest of you lot are reading, but not saying a damned thing.

It's certainly plausible that the topic doesn't get your brain cooking like it does mine, but it's also entirely possible that I presented it poorly. As well as I sometimes express myself here, we all have off days.

Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin wrote a book a while back called Three Cups of Tea, and the more I read it and read about it, the more I think it's rather profound. Paraphrased it the other day, but I'll gladly repeat myself.

The first cup we're strangers. The second we're friends, and by the third, you are family. If this seems ridiculous to you, my contention is that we are already family. Not tea fanatics, although that's also entirely true, but we humans. The divisions we have created and perpetuate lead to so many, if not all, of our problems.

Yes of course we still have incurable disease and natural disasters, but when it comes to man-made havoc, there's nothing quite like pitting two people or groups of people against one another. Nothing.

Let me take a ridiculous example to make my point. Most of you already know that I'm a dog lover. I like cats, but really prefer dogs. Were I to invite a cat-lover over for tea, she and I might have the first cuppa and still be feeling out the other's perspective.

But here's one of the reasons the 3 Cups idea works: I've had a cup of tea together with my cat-lover friend. The warm, delicious stuff is coarsing through our system, and we start to feel somehow at ease. As the second cup is poured, we're somehow transformed to friends. Tea alchemy is how I see this. It's a beautiful moment in any tea gathering, whether in a group or 1-on-1. It's a moment to savour.

So now my soon to be familized friend of all things feline is simultaneously warming to my canine capabilities. As we down the dregs of the second cup, we're on a tea high that only Teegenießer verstehen können.

The third cup is where the real magic happens. A few moments previously we were strangers. Or possibly acquaintances. But at some point during the process that started with the pouring of this next cup and continued with the actual drinking of it, we became the equivalent of blood. You might scoff and say this is immaterial. Or too simplistic. Or you might even think the whole premise is stupid.

I whole-heartedly disagree. By the third cup, my cat-loving friend might not love dogs any more or less than she did before, but she'd do nearly anything to defend my right to have my dogs. Before those three cups, she might very well have cursed dogs every time she saw an instance where someone didn't clean up after his dog. Maybe. Maybe not. Similarly, I might no longer think cats are secretly plotting to over-throw the human race. I might continue to have my conspiracy theories about the suspect nature of these other-worldly creatures that the ancient Egyptians even worshipped, but by the time the third cup of tea is swimming in my bloodstream, I very probably have come to the conclusion that an earth run by cats might not be so bad after all.

It certainly couldn't be any worse.