Three Days for a Cup of Tea

Jasmine tea isn't flavored. It's scented, the real stuff anyway, which means somebody picked green tea leaves and then laid them out at night next to fresh jasmine blossoms, over and over, for several nights running, just so the leaves would pick up what the flowers were giving off in the dark. Then they pull the spent blossoms out and do it again the next night with new ones. Nobody rushes that. You can't.

I think about that a lot when I'm packaging up Quiet Bloom, our jasmine green tea. Somebody on the other side of the world gave up several nights of flowers for a tea that costs seventeen dollars for three ounces. That math doesn't really work out in anyone's favor except the person who finally drinks it.

Which is kind of the whole point of generosity, isn't it. The good version of it doesn't balance. Somebody puts in more than they're going to get back, and the only reason it still happens is because giving the thing mattered more than getting repaid for it.

Generosity doesn't have to be big to count. It's usually not. It's putting the kettle on for someone before they ask. It's remembering how someone takes their tea and just making it that way without being told twice. It's handing someone the good mug instead of the chipped one, on a day you didn't plan to be thoughtful. You just were.

Have you ever had someone do something for you that took way more effort than you realized until later? That's usually when it hits hardest, when you find out after the fact what it actually cost someone to be kind to you.

Every person who's ever poured me a cup of something, really poured it, with intention, has taught me a little more about what it means to treat someone like they're worth the trouble. That's most of what I'm trying to build here, if I'm honest. A string of small, slightly inconvenient kindnesses that add up to somebody feeling like they belong at the table before they've done anything to earn it.

So go ahead and be the person who scents the leaves for several nights running. Most people will never know what it took. Make it anyway.

Choose to be kind. Choose to be grateful. Choose to be happy.

— Nina of GiaNina Collective