As future shortens
and the past grows,
their aggregate follows
a law of conservation --
the constancy of sum
of what is there to come
and what is gone.
In between
there is the present
trying to balance;
trying to smile;
trying not to fall.
Be it winter, spring, summer, or fall, if I am home and not zooming around in some distant part of the galaxy in search of nirvana, the day begins with a cup of loose-leaf orange pekoe black tea.
Holding a warm cup of freshly brewed tea with palms wrapped around the cup as if trying to hold a fragile baby bird that had fallen out of its nest, is such a wonderful start to a day. In the months of winter, the feeling is even more sublime.
Making Orange Pekoe tea each morning follows the same ritual. From the dark recesses of the kitchen cabinet, pull out the jar of tea, take a spoonful and put it into the infuser. This is while every passing moment, water in the electric kettle edges towards its boiling temperature.
Once the electric kettle lets me know that it has done its job, water gets poured in a cup in which the infuser also sits. I set the timer on the microwave for four minutes, and when the timer goes off, it is time for ...drum roll... My Very First Cup of Orange Pekoe Black Tea.
The tea has a beautiful deep brown color, and the translucent cup in which it sits brings out its glory; a wonderful aroma wafts up with the steam that rises from the cup. The cup of tea whispers to me to slow down and take time to appreciate and enjoy its company.
The main story, however, is about the jar that holds the loose-leaf orange pekoe tea.
Once I fill up the jar with tea, taking a spoonful each day hardly registers on the amount of tea that is remaining. In the beginning the change in the amount of tea is barely discernible; the level seems to stay the same. My mind never goes to the thoughts that there might come a day when the jar would be empty.
But sooner or later, illusions get broken and reality settles in.
Today morning after taking out the usual spoonful of tea I noticed that there is only few more spoonful worth of tea was left in the jar. With that realization came the thought that after a few more days, the jar would be empty.
The thought also led to the epiphany about how similar the process of jar of tea slowly getting empty one spoonful a day is to what happens with our life also.
In the beginning, life starts as a full jar. All through childhood, youth, days of building a career and slowly getting too immersed in it to the extent that it becomes our definition and identity, it is hard to realize that each day a spoonful of time is being taken away.
Initially the emptying the jar of time is so gradual that it does not seem like we are ever going to run out of days.
But one innocuous day going over the 60th birthday or having an existential moment of reckoning while sitting at some random spot or realizing pain and aches in the knees when temperature drops, or the humidity rises or when the work is no longer all-consuming, comes the awareness that the jar of time is suddenly whole lot emptier. The amount of time left in the jar is suddenly close to the bottom and there are not that many more spoonfuls left to take out.
That is when we say – where did the time go?
That moment of epiphany is the moment when a whole lot around, and within us, changes.
The transformation is like waking up one day and seeing the world around us with different colored glasses, or suddenly starting to see things that did not register on our consciousness before.
Foremost among them being that if you drink orange pekoe tea one day at a time, the jar will eventually get empty. Or alternatively, as you live one day at a time, the jar will eventually get empty.
And with that, different aspects of life that sat high on the totem pole of priorities start to inch downwards and lose relevance they once held.
That point in time when the awareness of the limits of our existence gels is a milestone and how we handle the awareness shapes our future journey.
Today I also broke another myth I held. It turned out that there is no orange in the orange pekoe tea. Really?
Contrary to what I thought, the tea does not have extract from the orange peel. Here is what ChatGPT had to say:
“The term "orange" in "orange pekoe" refers to the color of the dried tea leaves used to make the tea, rather than the fruit itself. "Pekoe" is derived from the Chinese word "baihao," which means "white hair" and refers to the young leaves and buds of the tea plant...The use of the word "orange" in "orange pekoe" can be traced back to the Dutch traders who played a significant role in the early tea trade. The Dutch term for a high-quality, whole-leaf tea was "oranjebohea," which over time, was anglicized to "orange pekoe,”” At least, that is one story behind the name.
Oh well. I also once thought that turquoise is the name of some fruit!
Ciao.
In the dark recesses
of the kitchen cabinet
sits a jar with an airtight lid
of the Orange Pekoe, loose leaf
aromatic black tea.
Each morning from that jar
a spoonful gets taken out
to help start the day
with warm cup of a tea
sitting in a wooden tray.
The same happens
be it winter, spring, summer,
or fall.
One spoonful a day
the jar gets little emptier
and emptier. and
emptier.
Then one day
hits the awareness
there is only few more spoonful
of the Orange Pekoe tea
are left in the jar, and then,
there would be none.
Is it not very much alike
what happens with life?