While flying to New York City I asked the flight attendant for a cup of hot tea. I’ve had airline tea before, and it is truly awful, but tea has always been the beverage that fuels my spirit, and after a lot of reading and sitting, I felt that would match my mood.

She handed me a styrofoam cup but without a tea bag. And as I gazed down at the murky black water in this unnatural container, I just knew it would taste bad … and it did.

I realize that tea for me isn’t just quality of the leaves or the purity of the water, but it also the ritual of making it. The act of slowing down to heat the water and fondle the leaves and in just being mindful or conscious of what you are doing, seems to add immense flavor to the tea. It is still better even when short-cutting this ritual with a bag (or as some people consider it, a dead floating mouse).

I took a couple of sips, but the overbrewed stringency was just too much, and how can you enjoy a good thoughtful mood with something that takes away? Granted being hit in the face repeatedly is one way to be alive in the present and not try to escape into a world of fantasy. I’m reminded of those Buddhists who use tea as a training exercise, as in this quote from Thich Nhat Hanh (taken from the July 2003 issue of Shambhala Sun, page 32):

When you’re offered a cup of tea, you have an opportunity to be happy. Drink your tea in such a way that you’re truly present. Otherwise, how can you enjoy your tea?

I handed it back to the attendant and decided that imaginary tea was better than the contents of that cup. So I pretended that I was back home making a cup of oolong in a clay pot. Funny, my favorite tea is actually the pretend tea my daughter and I have in a little teepee next to my desk in my den. We get a number of stuffed friends to join us in our pretend tea and pretend cookies. We then tell stories and jokes and the little stuffed pig complains until we tell the story of the Three Little Pigs, after which the collection of bears explain that they wouldn’t mind acting out the story of the Three Bears. The stuffed dog then moans out loud that he would like to hear a dog story but can’t think of one, so I calm him down with a dog story of my own invention.

See, no other beverage can compete with these taste-ridden rituals.