Sit With Me
A few years ago, an old friend got me into the habit of drinking a cup of green tea every morning when we were experimenting with building healthy habits and routines together. I was hoping to maybe do it for a month and it has now been three years. This person will never know the profound impact that the practice has had on me. Perhaps if they’re reading this, they will. What started out as a simple act of consuming tea for physiological health has turned into somewhat of a morning ritual where I spend an hour sitting with myself. I look forward to it. I wake up earlier to do it. It’s as simple as brushing my teeth, I do it everywhere I go — sometimes stubbornly, to the inconvenience of others.
Back home in India, my parents often made fun of me when they came downstairs at 6:30 am to find me cross-legged on the couch with my soupbowl-sized teacup — gazing out the window, usually watching our golden carps dancing in the fountain water. In the months before I left, my cat would join me in doing the same, perhaps having other thoughts about the fish. I’d like to believe that though my parents jokingly mocked this activity, they had underlying respect for the discipline it brought out in me. Making my home now in Toronto, for the first time, I got to curate this spot and make it my own (as pictured). I’ve enjoyed watching my spot evolve over the course of 5 months as Maddy and I saved up to add different layers to our living room. The aesthetic of the space surely helps but doesn’t really matter. I sit in deep appreciation of the sense of belonging that a sense of “place” creates — that wherever I may go, an hour in the morning with a place to sit and a cup of tea is all I need to meet myself.
Each morning I drink the same tea, in the same spot, and look out the same window. When everything else stays constant, the only thing that changes every day is what’s inside me. My breath, my thoughts, my feelings. I don’t try to understand the why of it, I just watch it and create space for it — she deserves the freedom to be as she pleases when she spends so much time being controlled in the day. There is more to mindfulness than just being present. People often think that we worry because we think of the future, and we ruminate because we think about the past. Therefore, if we are in the present we do not experience worry or rumination. But, one of my yoga teachers once said that to fully move past something, we must fully experience it — and I agree. In my mindfulness practice, I sit accepting, open, non-judgmental, and curious, fully experiencing what I might be thinking or feeling.
I fluctuate between the past, future, and present. But being aware of this fluctuation helps root me in the latter. I think about moments that have been (unless I’m plagued by a recent experience, these moments I’ve noticed, have been surprisingly happy). I imagine moments that could be — building up a fairy tale of possibilities and future conversations as if I’m preparing myself for these situations (occasionally confrontational, but mostly also happy). Sometimes I write down the things I want to say to people but don’t have the courage to, just so that I don’t forget how I feel or how they made me feel in the moment. Sometimes I have the courage and use this moment to send them the things I wrote. I’m grateful as I notice the change in season as the tree outside my window succumbs to the weather. I’m in awe as I notice a new leaf grow in a plant I thought was dying. I smirk as I watch a dog walk its owner as it fights to get more playtime in the powdery fresh snow (those are my favorite days).
At the half-hour mark, my first cup of tea usually runs out and I add more hot water to refill it. I return to my spot and appreciate how sitting in it has made it warmer and sink in deeper. I notice and often grimace at the slight dent in the back pillow from sitting in it ever so often, but I also find comfort in it — it remembers me, welcomes me even. I appreciate the silence and the soft comforting hum of the air vent. I hear Maddy’s alarm go off, but don’t hear footsteps so I smile imagining she snugged herself deeper into her bed to savor the last few minutes of the dawn. As the sky starts to get brighter, and the pleasant lull of the early morning lifts, I take my last sip.
