"Doesn't that water burn your fingers?" one of them asked.
"I suppose it does," smiled Frank, now pouring the steaming water over a basket of beautiful jasmine pearls. He circled his pot, cascading the water down so as to douse each pearl with a thin stream. As the water graced each of their surfaces, the pearls unfurled, revealing beautiful wet green leaves that stretched their arms upward.
"Then why do you do it?" she asked, curious.
"It is ritual...a part of the craft." Frank's words emerged from his lips slowly, a calm smile following each word. He went on,
"My job is to help people slow down, and each of the rituals in my preparation of this tea helps me to slow down, too."
It was the day before my eighth grade world cultures classes were to present their research at the annual World Congress Symposium. This particular group, the Human Rights task force, had a mere 26 hours before they would sit in front of their peers and deliver their findings, synthesis, and solutions. Yet as we visited Frank Kwei at his tea pavilion, any anxiety remained undetectable on their faces. They were rapt by the subject matter, enamored by the tea being prepared for them. They had slowed down, and there was no place for anxiety to fit in.
Frank spoke again.
"When someone prepares you tea, you do not have to enjoy the tea. But you do have to respect it. Thousands of years have gone into its creation. The soil, the science, the cultivation, the mastery, the wisdom."
My students sip.
They struggle to describe what they taste.
They whisper.
"Burnt toast."
"Seaweed."
"Nutty steam."
"Those are tannins," says Frank.
"Yes, now let it touch all the parts of your tongue," he encourages.
"What are the two flavors doing to each other?"
They respect the tea.
Frank shows them a teapot made of ceramic.
"This is a bowl and a lid."
The students can't argue. It is. Bowl and lid.
"People have been making tea with a bowl and lid for thousands of years. Could they develop a more modern way to make tea?"
The students answer yes.
Of course.
"If something is beautiful, efficient, simple, and it has worked for 4,000 years. Leave it alone."
My students walk quietly as we leave. Tomorrow they will teach me about the world. They will teach me about how their generation has unfinished business. How they will be the ones responsible for solving world hunger, illiteracy, air pollution, and deforestation. They will teach me that 15 people die of hunger every minute; that malaria is one of the largest killers in world history; that stem cell research might hold the key to solving Alzheimer's Disease; that our earth, with its oceans and winds already does everything we need to energize our future.
I am reminded that behind all of our anxiety, our technology, our social awareness, our flaws, our hopes, are mammals. Awesome mammals. Mammals who have been doing something beautiful, efficient, simple, for thousands of years. Problems have been solved, and problems we can't predict are beyond the horizon.
We do need to evolve, but in our evolving, we also need to leave ourselves alone. We need to focus on the simplicity of slowing down. Because in our slowing, in the midst of our lives, we see the connections that lead to possibilities.
Life hurts sometimes, but it is our ritualistic nature that helps us heal, retain hope.
It is part of the craft of being human.
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