Alright, you can call me a coward. Or wishy-washy. But I'm a lot happier WITH tea in my life than without. Lent has not even begun yet, and I'm losing my resolve to renounce tea. And this, at a time when I need tea the most.
If I am going to become any kind of aristocrat, which is one of my lifelong desires, and leave my family and my future generations a little better off than I found them, I need a real job right now. And I need to go to grad school. My period as a disillusioned youth is over. If I am to move my family up in the world, I need to get started right now. And this means putting in applications. And putting in applications means researching jobs and graduate programs. And that means a need for energy. And that means tea.
(Oh, how I hate the word "job"—it sounds so sordid. And so like to the fellow who suffered so much in the Old Testament: Job. But since I don't know how to trade stocks and don't have enough money to buy a house, let alone flip one, my starting place for now will have to be to get the best job and save up enough funds and do something intelligent with it later.)
Maybe I'm not making the biggest sacrifice I could for Lent. Maybe I'm giving in to Nietzsche's influence and turning Lent from a world-negation into a life-affirmation. Maybe I'm letting my tea addiction take hold. Maybe I'm going against my Italian heritage by advocating tea over coffee. But tea is healthier and cleaner. And the Buddhist monks used it to keep vigilant in their own spiritual struggles. And that is what I am doing.
So, once and for all, I'm not going to give up tea for Lent. At least, not this year. I'm going to give up coffee. I don't think I've gone more than a week without my daily espresso since college, so that will be a sacrifice. In fact, it will be such a sacrifice that I'm going to go stock up on some right now. I have SO much respect for people who renounce seriously.
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