Life is Lived in Seasons
On inflection points
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Qi Pottery’s Instagram post on 18 July tugs so many strings in my heart.
The founder of Qi Pottery, Kim Whye Kee, is an amazing ceramist from Singapore with a truly powerful and inspiring story. From a gang leader to a globally-established potter.
He fell in love with pottery behind the bars! While serving prison time for over a decade, he learned about his father’s death which led him to consciously transform his life.
His post resonates with me. Some of us hit plateaus at certain point in our lives. What’s next? For others, we get to a fork, do we take it?
Passion ebbs and flows. It can evolve into different forms -strengthen, diverge, or taper off, not a straight line. What if passion comes at the expense of other important things in life? What is the point? How does one chooses? When is enough enough?
Inflection points are powerful. Emerging at pivotal moments - whether when experiencing major life events, overcoming significant challenges, facing crossroads, or feeling stuck and unsure.
They are a rare chance to reconstruct one’s life from the ground up. And not everybody gets that opportunity to redefine the path forward.
Life is lived in seasons
There is an old Taoism saying: “The human body is a microcosm of the universe, holding within itself the energies of both heaven and earth”.
Tea is very similar to us. After all, human beings and nature are of the same source. “Before 35, we undergo rapid changes. As we age, we mellow and some of us seek stability” - Vivian Zhang, Co-Founder of Eastern Leaves. Or it seeks us.
Just as tea leaves undergo transformation from their raw state to flavorful brew, humans also experience growth and changes throughout our lives. Both go through processes that shape their final character and essence.
Just as different teas are suited to different seasons, each season in our life brings with its own unique thrills, lulls, joys, and challenges - adding richness and depth to our lives. In Summer, cool the body with yin energy (white tea, green tea, raw pu’er, flower tea). In Winter, warm the body with yang energy (black tea, ripe pu’er).
Perhaps this comes with age, I now crave un-rushed unscheduled time. Leaning into and nurturing intangible aspects of life that we can’t quite put a price tag on - moments, creativity, spirituality.
Tea and spirituality are deeply intertwined. During the Song Dynasty, Emperor Song Hui Zong promoted Taoism, in addition to elevating and popularizing Chinese tea culture. Matcha powdered-style green tea originated from then. Eventually Japan evolved and refined matcha to become a formalized practice of Japanese chado or tea ceremony that we are now familiar with.For more on spirituality, I recommend: Taoism Reimagined by Yuxuan Francis Liu & Money and Meaning by Douglas Tsoi
Breaks spark breakthroughs
Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” - Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
This year, we are experiencing a lot more rain here (and high humidity!) in East Asia. Tea is highly sensitive to the environment. Conventionally, we might think that tea leaves thrive with rain. Yes, but only to a certain extent.
Too much rain means weak tea - lighter and less complex tea flavor with changes in health compounds. Too much of a good thing can be bad.
Oolong tea, considered tea perfume among all 6 broad types of tea, has the widest and most complex flavor profile. It has one of the most arduous processing of all tea types, hence the expression “turning the river and overturning the sea to produce Oolong”.
I was surprised to learn that resting is perhaps the most important step for the development of complex aroma in Oolong tea. Through ‘controlled movement stress’, the tea farmer shakes/ bruises (yao qing) tea leaves for 1-2 minutes, then let it rest (liang qiang) for 1 hour. This is to be repeated for up to 5-8 times throughout the night!
To athletes, rest and recovery is also essential to allow muscles to rebuild, grow, and reboot performance.
Elite athletes run at 85% intensity to avoid tensed-up bodies while keeping them effortless. Balanced effort is key.
Might we say the same for those working on important world causes, complex projects, moulding the creative process? Knowing when is enough.
From
’s Metalabel post:Success is a double-edged sword. Kurt Cobain once reminisced that if he could do it all over again, he would go back to those moments before they became big. When they were touring in a van and they could feel things starting to happen for them. That was the most gratifying moment in his memory. If he had his choice, they would have stayed there forever.
Art-science of balancing act
Good tea is resilient, capable of tasting consistently good despite the number of cups, brewed in many different ways. But the road to ‘good’ is a delicate, lifelong practice of balancing act.
The first cup kisses away my thirst, and my loneliness is quelled by the second. The third gives insight worthy of ancient scrolls, and the fourth exiles my troubles. My body becomes lighter with the fifth, and the sixth sends word from immortals. But the seventh - oh the seventh cup - if I drink you, a wind will hurry my wings toward the sacred island.
Lu Tong (Tang Dynasty) trans. Christopher Nelson
I like the parallel of tea and the creative process. Great things cannot be rushed. I remember learning calligraphy from my father and hearing him repeating the old phrase "one and one's calligraphy grow old together" 人書俱老 to me.
"But the road to ‘good’ is a delicate, lifelong practice of balancing act." This is a helpful reminder for me!