Tea Leaves, Tears, and The Need to be Loved

A week ago, I woke up wanting to do something different with my day. So I packed up my computer and my history notes, made sure I had enough money for the bus fare, and hopped on the 86 bus to Harvard Square. I grabbed a quick lunch then settled down to study for my history final in a wee shop there called Tealuxe.

You know the icebreaker game that asks what special rooms you would have in your ultimate dream home, if money wasn't a problem? Well, I would have a room like Tealuxe. When you walk in, hundreds of little drawers fill up a whole wall behind the simple wooden counter. Each drawer is filled with its own loose leaf tea. The whole other wall is full of tea kettles, tea cups, and any other tea-related contraption you can imagine. You can order any of the over one hundred and fifty kinds of tea, hot or iced. Or you can be indecisive, like me, and just order one of the five teas that they brew twice daily and keep on tap. You can also buy a tin of the loose leaf tea for your own home-brewing pleasure. I don't remember exactly how many types they had, specifically. But I know that there are over one hundred and fifty, because I bought 30 grams of tea #151: white tea with undertones of coconut and pineapple. It's one of my new favorite places.

Later, as I was walking around Harvard Square, I did a little people watching. I was really struck by the extravagant means which some of the individuals there had embraced just to communicate their individuality. Funky, off-beat clothes; daring haircuts; unique shoes or no shoes at all - everyone wanted everyone else to know that they were not like everyone else. I couldn't help but look at myself. That morning I had donned my blue broomstick skirt and a white, short-sleeved button up shirt; tied my hair up; and wrapped a thin, blue scarf around my neck in a very European-esque manner despite the forecast for a swelteringly hot and humid day (by Boston standards). I had wanted everyone in Harvard Square to know that I am artistic, that I am the mainstream, that I am an individual. But at some level, that behavior distrubs me. Not so much in other people, I almost expect it from everyone else. But I thought, wrongly, that I was a different story.

I realized that just because I can identify someone else's issues doesn't mean that I am immune to those same issues. In fact, I have discovered that if I can see a weakness clearly in someone else's life, I am perhaps crippled by that same weakness to the same degree, if not more.

This whole process of discovery has given me a new pair of lenses with which I now perceive myself and those around me. I realized than over ninety percent of what the average person externalizes is self-motivated. For example, in sharing information in class or discussion or even in casual conversation with a friend, more often than not, one says something not because you genuinely would like to inform the person with which one is talking, but because one wants the recipient of the information to know that you know. In my own reflection, my best record was 50/50. Fifty percent other-motivated. Fifty percent self-motivated.

Public displays of affection, tears especially, are no better. We want everyone to know that we are sensitive, caring individual capable of being completely and wholly moved by the words we are hearing or the images we are seeing.

So where do we go from here? How can we hope to change something that seems to be so indelibly engrained upon our souls, woven into our very humanity?

Awareness helps: helps us to suspend judgement, helps to identify the problem, helps to know that you are not immune, helps us to fight against it. When I next get the urge to blurt out a random fact I know that's related to the conversation, I plan to bite my tongue. When I next find myself on the verge of tears in a theatre or any public place, I plan to discreetly deal with my emotions.

More importantly, I can utilize this understanding of a fundamental need: the need to be validated as a person, the need to have needs recognized, the need to feel special, the need to be loved. I can choose to love. The next time I'm in Harvard Square or anyone, I can share the joy of the Lord with freedom and reckless abandon rather than be taken aback by the myriad of personal choices. When someone shares a story or fact with me, I can receive the information with love, praise, and validation, in sincerity. When the person next to me begins to cry, I can give them the deference and recognition that I myself crave so desperately at times.

Isn't it great how God teaches these funny little lessons about ourselves, and all from a day surrounded by tea leaves...