I am a huge tea fan.  There’s just something about it that I love.  It calms and soothes me and puts me in a place I like.  I have collected tea pots for years and have quite a collection, each with a story.  The bright yellow one my first husband bought me when we were in law school, and the Chinese set he bought me while we were married.  The bright yellow one (can you tell yellow is my favorite color?) my sister made for me. The musical one that played “Tea for Two” that my step-mother gave me one Christmas. The gold-rimmed flowered set my partner gave me.  One of my favorites is one I received for my college graduation from my then-boyfriend’s family 42 years ago.  I also love tea kettles.  I usually use a glass electric one that was a gift from my nephew, Christopher.  It’s beautiful and efficient and gets the job done quickly. However, recently I began using once again a tea kettle that I picked up in Egypt (where I met and married my second husband) 13 years ago.  There’s something that is pulling at me about it.

This morning, as I poured the boiling water into my giant tea mug, preparing for a day of intense grading of papers and other end-of-the-semester madness professors go through, I realized what it is.

I needed to slow down.  My Egyptian tea kettle won’t let me quickly make my tea.  I have to heat it on the stove rather than plug it in, and when I pour the water into the cup, the spout is cleverly made so that I cannot pour quickly.  I have to take the time to let it flow.

That is a giant irritant. I’m trying to hurry through and get to my grading. My work plate is really, really full, and I’m in full-speed-ahead, I’ve-got-a-lot-of-crap-to-do mode.  My sister scolded me just yesterday for not answering her phone calls.  But, I know that when we speak, one of the reasons I love it is that it is for hours at a time, and I just don’t have it right now.  Everything is rush rush.

But, not my boiling water flowing out of the tea kettle spout.

I have lived my life long enough to understand that when something like this happens, something else is going on that I need to address.  There is a message I need to tune in to.  I’m being told something I need to listen to.

So, I wondered, what is the lesson here?  Why is this happening?  I’m making tea, for pete’s sake.  What lesson could there possibly be in that? Why am I even using this tea kettle when I could so easily use one that heats and pours my water more quickly?

Then, it hit me.

Because you need to.

Slow down.  You’re moving too fast.  Everything will get done when it needs to.  It always does.  All is well.  Everyone has the same number of hours in a day. Chill out.

Got it.  Thanks for the reminder.