Yesterday I had lunch at a local eatery that specializes in things grown within a 50 mile radius of our city. My lunch companion was someone I met when she became a customer in the store we had here for four-and-a-half years. She is a systems engineer for Verizon, 
but was recognized by USA Today as one of the country’s top Latino bloggers, along with many other honors.
She was one of the fortunate 8,000 or so chosen by Google to be first users of their Google glasses. I got to try them on. . .made me slightly dizzy trying to use them! She is brilliant and lives life to the fullest, currently developing a series of blogs and bloggers who are all part of an even bigger vision she has.
She loves really high quality loose leaf tea.
While we were eating, one of the owners of the woman-owned eatery stopped by to tell me they were going to need to order more tea soon. Her business is featured on indiegogo.com right now to raise funds to move and expand and help the local economy in an even bigger way. She wanted to make sure their tea was of the same high quality as everything else they offer.
As I watched the two of them and listened, I realized that we are all passionate about what we are doing and that tea is the common denominator that brought us together. And tea is helping to keep us connected.
Tea is a connector. I think it is much more a connector than coffee, even though people meet ‘for coffee’ socially much more in this country than they do for tea. I mean connected on a deeper level than just chatting over a cuppa or having a cup sitting next to a laptop, glued to the screen for hours in a coffeehouse, surrounded by others doing exactly the same thing.
There’s something about tea that brings about more depth of knowledge and involvement with the product when one embraces loose tea culture. Tea people also tend to be interested in other food/beverage subjects like gluten, caffeine levels, and health in general. When I think of foods consumed with coffee, what comes to mind is usually heavy on sugar and fat. When I think of tea, lighter, healthier accompaniments come to mind. There are exceptions, of course, to all generalities.
I’m sure all of us who write for, or read, tea blogs have experienced our own connecting experiences over or because of tea.
I do wonder what it is Diane that accounts for that interest or “depth of knowledge and involvement”. I’ve witnessed it myself. My quick answer relates to the health benefits and the lifestyle choices that go along with the healthiest beverage on the planet. On the other hand however, I know of many devout tea drinkers who aren’t interested in the health benefits of tea but rather the spirituality of the leaf. What ever it is, it seems to bind us together in a rather unique way.
I don’t either, Michelle, but I like it! Such interesting people seem drawn to tea.
I was thinking the same thing, Michelle. I think the connectivity goes beyond bonding over tea as a nutritive substance, and has more to do with the quality of the leaf, whether in terms of spirituality or social conviviality. It’s probably the steam…because iced tea has a completely different feel.