C.S. Lewis once said, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me,” and this quote is a poignant description of a reality felt by many. Tea has the ability to calm, excite, bring people together, and relax the mind. Its benefits can be felt by the body, mind and soul.

For me, tea is an excursion away from my daily life. I can brew a cup, curl up on a comfy chair and just let my stress float away. It is the time I take to gather my thoughts, reflect, and let go of my worries. I suspect this experience is one felt by many in their daily lives.

With a warm cup of tea in hand, one may feel like they can conquer the world, or at least conquer their thoughts for the evening.

Socially, tea and coffee dates are common among friends to have serious conversation or to just take a break together. Strangely, I have had some of my best and most fulfilling conversations over a cup of tea.

For me, the cup of tea or coffee is more than just a hot beverage – sometimes it is my lifeline. The person I’m with asks me an awkward question? I’ll just grip the cup and pretend like I have scalded my hand.

I don’t want to talk about something? I’ll pull the top of the Starbucks cup off, peer into the murky tea depths and see if I can read the future of this awkward conversation via the soggy tea bag. That’s how they do it in Hogwarts, right?

If I start feeling particularly uncomfortable, I might start shifting in my seat causing me to hit the table and send the tea flying onto the floor. Even worse is when I become really emphatic about the turn of conversation – I might wave my hand wildly and spill the contents onto my lap like an overgrown child.

As I grasp my lifeline and stare my friend (or opponent…) down at the opposite side of the table, I almost always come to my best life conclusions during these conversations. I have concluded that there are a couple of reasons for that.

One being that I don’t think we take the time as a society to slow down and reflect often. Everything is instantaneous, and we rarely have time to take the larger picture. When I’m getting tea or coffee, I put my cares about business and school to the side, and try to focus on large-scale ideas or character improvement.

The second reason being that friendships can become inundated with trivial matters – who your other friend started dating, the rumors around campus, and what hairstyle you should try next. We stop connecting with each other on personal levels, stop learning from each other and therefore, we stop building meaningful friendships.

If you take the time to get to know your peers on a different, more personal level, then you can benefit and make connections that will last after college. Furthermore, we are each coming from different perspectives and backgrounds – sometimes that extra push in a different direction may be exactly what you need to make a logical breakthrough.

The third and final reason being that this break from our every-day lives and routines can be the moments of mental quiet that is necessary for things to sort themselves out. Sometimes we spend so much time worrying about how things will work out, that we lose faith in the age-old maxim of just letting things be.

And sometimes, it is just nice to take a break, relax, and drink a cup of tea in the company of someone who makes you smile and laugh. There is nothing wrong with taking time to enjoy the finer things in life – in fact, it is highly recommended for the mental sanity of busy college students to take breaks, reflect and laugh with friends.

For one of my classes last semester, I had to read the text “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. In it, there is an old Balti proverb that says, “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family…”

So take tea with friends – and try to make it a routine. It can be the forger of lasting bonds, or it can lead to the great deluge of understanding. If anything else, take tea to forget the worries on the world (given you wait long enough so that it doesn’t burn on the way down.)

To contact the Ionian’s Heather Nannery, e-mail her at [email protected]