Crowd Sourcing

I like to have a cup of tea at the end of my dinner, and I found this habit when I got together with my first husband. This was what his whole family did, and it seemed a nice way to end my meal so soon became my habit. That husband has moved on and I don’t know what he does, but his family is still in my life, and I recently had supper with them. At the beginning of the meal, they asked if I still enjoyed tea at the end; when I said I did they brewed some for me. I was then offered the single serving of tea. 

It struck me as remarkable that for different reasons all of these relations no longer had a cup of tea at the end of their meal. They have all changed their habit and I am still performing it, learned from them even thought I spend very little time with them now.  

It is interesting to me that this type of thing happens in our lives more often than we probably know. We learn and improve ourselves, others learn from others, and those ripples just keep on going and changing for all of us. Now, sure, tea is not a revolutionary life changer, but lots of other things I have learned have made me the person I am now. Are those who mentored me now doing things differently after following yet more models?

 Writer Richard Bach challenges us to keep on growing and becoming truer to ourselves. He tells us that in the discovery of who we really are there is the ultimate freedom, and that we discover that freedom by reflecting, learning, leaning and growing with others all around us. 

I like tea at the end of my meal and now I seem to be the only one in that crowd that still does.  I will stick to what I like until I find something that works better, if that happens. Sometimes we could make a wrong move, but I think we can agree the living is in the moving, the flying, the trying and the ripples of change and growth that happens when we both grow with the crowd and leave other crowds behind. 

Image source: https://openverse.org/