Tea and Sympathy

As I write this on a rainy Friday afternoon in New York, I am drinking a hot cup of peppermint tea. While I can think of no better way to start a morning than a strong coffee, tea is an afternoon drink and must always be treated as such. That being said, I must admit that in the past few years, especially after moving to New York, I get faintly embarrassed at buying, preparing, and consuming tea--a feeling that is greatly exacerbated by my preference for mint tea. This unease isn't because I dislike tea--far from it, obviously. It is more that I don't like the idea of other people on line with me at the market seeing my mint tea and associating me with the strange Moby-inspired trendiness that is part and parcel of tea subculture.

Tea has been around, according to my research, for about 75 million years, and I have reliable evidence that dinosaurs drank it regularly. It is a staple drink of many cultures, including India, which would explain my early introduction to the brew. But in America, the 1990s saw a huge popularity for all things Eastern--Anime cartoons, Chinese/Japanese tattoos, Henna--and tea was part of that resurgence to be sure. While coffee has a distinct European context, tea is Asian, and therefore seen as more exotic. Coffee is fuel--it's aggressive and capitalist and people drink it with one hand while reading the Wall Street Journal and firing their assistant. Tea is serene, contemplative, reflective and something you indulge in while cultivating your own garden and massaging your chi and feeling a breeze lick your face and open your kimono in an indecent manner. It's not clear to me why these stereotypes exist, seeing as my process for making either is more or less the same, but they are indelibly stamped in our minds, or for the sake of this argument they are. I would imagine that many young people who drink tea drink it to be associated with this intellectualism and serenity, as if either of those can be achieved through hot drinks. This is probably why whenever I buy mint tea (the only other tea I like is English Breakfast, but I don't even like that too much) it always comes with philosophical saying that look like they came out of a 9th graders term paper.

I dislike the whole packaged smugness that surrounds tea now because I think it creates and encourages a mysticism and quiet superiority that isn't real. Tea does not have healing properties just because wise, bearded Asians people drink it in movies. It is nothing more than leaves boiled in water. Stop selling me tea where every bag has a quote from Homer or Ralph Waldo Emerson. I can't buy coffee with quotes from Voltaire on the bag--because it would be stupid. Tea is a fine product without anyone ascribing supernaturalism to it.

Hipsters ruin everything.