Small Tea

WHO TOLD US THAT we needed to lead these high-performance lives? It wasn’t coffee, the drink. It was coffee, the business. Those industrious people with beans by the boatful and an inelegant promise to sell. They told us we were tired and run down and needed to be jumpstarted and re-energized and fueled. And we believe them. They told us we weren’t good enough on our own. That we lacked vim and vigor. That our ambitions needed to be accelerated. That a little liquid hubris was precisely what society needed to be its best. And we drank it all up. But do we really need to be turbocharged? Aren’t our desires big enough and wonderful enough on their own? Did this carefully packaged ideal of high-octane living truthfully ever make us better, more attuned, more resourceful, or more responsive beings? Has rushing into that all-to- familiar “third place” and leaving all a-jitter really been the best way to embrace the world? Or each other? Has it made us more present? More insightful? More understanding? More loving? Has it made us more human? Wiser? More helpful? More kind? Have we advanced our capacity for empathy? Have we been smarter? Or have we simply been faster on the draw? Quicker to think, quicker to judge, quicker to speak quicker to act, quicker to grab center stage and dance our own little self-indulgent java jig? Good Questions. Questions we neglect to ask in this fidgety age of instant gratification. “Quick, quick, quick!” says Big Coffee. “Now, now now!” And there we g