Ditch the microwave. Use the kettle.
Paying Attention and Daily Ritual
I am dragging today, and I can feel the sluggishness of my physical body, like walking around with a bit of sediment in my limbs. The sky is sunless, a knitted cloud cap pulled down low over the mountain peaks. Sipping on a cup of tea in my quiet house will do my soul some good. I decide I won't ask too much of myself in the next 30 minutes—just a warming cup in my chilled hands, a sit down at my kitchen table to rest, to pause.
The lights are off in the unusually still kitchen, though scattered as it often is with the reminders of the lives this house holds. I leave the tidying for later and reach for my favorite pottery mug. It has held hundreds of morning coffees and evening cups of tea and has a "twin" mug. Because they are hand-thrown, one mug is slightly rounder and one a smidge taller. The mugs are quite similar in appearance at a glance, but with a bit of study, you see they are different, like all identical twins. I bought the set from a North Carolina ceramicist in an aging barn on a fall day, not dissimilar from today, 22 years ago—purchased with my still honeymooning heart, thinking my husband and I would each claim one. We always buy mugs in twos now, a sweet tradition started in that country barn at a pottery show in the early days of my marriage.
The moment I pulled down the mug, I decided to dig out our white enameled tea kettle. I am not much of a hot tea drinker in the summer, and the kettle gets pushed further back on the storage shelf until the weather cools again. During the winter months, the kettle lives happily on the stovetop, and my reach for it now is an outward sign of my rhythm syncing with the changing seasons. The movements of filling the kettle, clicking the stove's flame on, and placing the kettle on the stove top with a clank all feel ritualistic. Some familiar comfort fills me, moving the sediment from my extremities as I feel myself honoring the tea-making process, the known sounds, and the dance of steps to and fro in my kitchen.
Putting the water to boil in a kettle embraces the slowing down I crave. There are many gifts in slowing down, including what we can pay attention to when life isn’t buzzing by: comfort found in my well-worn and patterned steps across the kitchen, subtlety as the afternoon’s sunless sky fills the room with a gray light that exactly matches my mood, and familiarity in the blooming aroma of my favorite black tea. Beauty and comfort found in the humdrum acts of daily living certainly allow for an expanded perception of life’s abundance. Noticing my sense of contentment while making a cup of tea on the first autumn-like day of the year offers richness in the ordinary—an act so simple and benign, yet filled with a pleasurable sensory experience if we are still enough to notice it. The act of putting a kettle on for tea is transmuted from task to ritual when we pay attention.
I sit down at our kitchen table to wait for the tea to boil. Even waiting in the quietness of daylight hours spent in a house without its inhabitants becomes part of the ritual. I felt the stillness of the house match the stillness in my body. The cream poured into my steeping, steaming mug, swirls in a cloud-like galaxy of brown and tan. The subtle smell of flowers from the Earl Grey tea, the sugar cubes plopped to dissolve into the perfect balance of earthy, creamy, and sweet.
Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do, to give it your complete attention. This is surrendered action— empowered action. —Eckart Tolle
I wonder to myself if it would actually have been faster to put the mug in the microwave to heat the water. Probably, I think to myself, but why put the water to boil in a machine when an analog experience, with all its steadying ritual, is available? The microwave comes with slamming doors and intrusive beeping. Like many technologies in modern life, it can be a handy tool offering convenience, but it can also whisk us into the illusion of something better—another way for humans to keep on the surface of life instead of living deeply in it.
It is not really about the kettle or the microwave; it is about noticing and paying attention. When the small details of daily living are noticed, they stitch together over the years, creating a tapestry lush in color, story, and meaning. Annie Dillard said it best, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing." How many "slow" tasks that used to offer ritual in their repetition have we forsaken in the name of mechanization and convenience? Slowing down isn't about being slow all the time but about choosing when to slow down and when to go faster. We unintentionally sacrifice color, nuance and a sense of abundance in our racing, buzzing, time-maximizing lives. How much richness have we lost in the name of "saving time" when being present for time, living fully in the moment, is the most significant gain of all?
For today, I think I will leave the last words to Gandhi as I sit in the afternoon hush of my kitchen with a steaming cup of tea in my hand.
There is more to life than increasing its speed. —Gandhi