Get Off the Freakin Coffee! (tea neurosis - but it's normal)

Yes, I pity my camellia deprived friends. They spend their whole lives (or mornings, at least) in a half-asleep stupor until they have their coffee. They seem unable to function without the stuff. They go around with their little coffee lives, stopping for coffee on the way to work, having coffee at work, and worst of all, offering us - Teaists a cup of the dreaded stuff. Of course we gracefully decline, saying that we burnt our tongue on toast, and drinking anything hot would be forever too painful. But in our minds we are thinking: "Who would want to drink coffee anyway? Drinking the stuff gives you coffee breath. And besides, my tea palette is too precious to be ruined by such an odoriferous substance."

We Teaists live a good, clean, healthy tea life. It's not at all like those coffee freaks who gulp down their black stuff while inhaling a cigarette. No, no, those are not for us. We want to be clean and odor-free so we can smell the pure fragrance of our tea without distraction. And we want to be able to appreciate the unadulterated taste of tea. Our tongues are super-sensitive gustation machines.

And we absolutely hate it when other people fondle our tea things. It should be illegal to hold tea things until you have taken a course and are proficient in Tea Thing Handling. Yeah, that would greatly reduce the unnecessary cracking of a gaiwan, the heart-wrenching shattering of a gaiwan lid, the senseless breaking of a teapot handle. Yes, the world would be a much happier place if only those un-thinking people listened in the first place to the words "Don't touch that!"

But life goes on and what is broken is broken - an experience well learned and memories of glorious tea brewing in a piece well used. What are you doing? Are you crazy? Put that broom away. It's sacrilege to throw out my broken but still cherished gaiwan like it was nothing. No, I will instead keep the jagged little pieces in a bowl, as a memorial. And when I am done mourning - say after 3 years, and after many fallen comrades are committed to the "broken bowl", I will bury them all together, in the earth - for future generations to discover, and marvel at tea drinking customs of the early 21st century.

If you're a coffee drinker, do you now see what you're missing? Can you finally feel the void in your life now? Do you finally realize how senseless it is to go on with your life in a camellia deprived state? How can you live like that? How can anyone live like that? To drink tea is to enjoy a full, rich life. To be a Teaist is normal, albeit a little neurotic, but perfectly normal. Get a grip on yourself. Get some tea. And if you have to, seek professional help. Don't let yourself go like that. There is hope for you, really. Others like you were once coffee addicts; but their lives were saved because of tea. The soul is not complete without Tea.

Sphere: Related Content