Teabag Wisdom

I have a confession: I buy Yogi Tea just for the tea bags. That is what I have come to. And, because I buy so many teas, I have become a connoisseur of tea bag wisdom. On each tea bag is a little message/bit of inspiration. On the woman's teas there are softer, more "love" oriented messages, on the more unisex teas more general messages. Ginger tea is a staple for me, and I found this time around that the messages have changed again. This time they are more provocative and less comforting. But that's OK. I'm along for the ride.

Last night I pulled out my tea bag and it said: What is your identity and what will be your legacy?

Wow! That can really stir a woman up as she is climbing into bed. My identity????/ My legacy?????? It goes to the core of our time on earth, to the subject of my blog, It was enough to give me a panic attack.

And yet--how important. And now that the question has been raised I cannot push it down again.

And so I think. I think how my legacy is not the traditional ego-driven monument dream of males at this point in my life. I do not long to erect a cathedral, or a sky-scraper, or write a peace treaty, or change the world in that way. A way that will say "I was GREAT!" forever. As I grow older, and live life as a mother, I feel my ideas of my legacy and what I want it to be changing. I find myself thinking of the importance of small change more--and seeing how big change can only be effected by small change.

Legacy: Of course I think of my boys. They are the most tangible legacy. They look like me and will carry pieces of me inside them--whether in the form of DNA, memories, tastes, smells, or how to live. So I care a lot about them.

And I care about stories. I care that people continue to see the world as storytellers, to seek their own truth, and to realize that they have their own stories to tell. I hope to inspire people by doing that myself, and by teaching and helping others to do that. The way stories are told is shifting again as newspapers die, print is endangered, books are on the verge of extinction, free to Google--stories are downgraded to content, and people can only consume information in the form of power point or bullet points. I feel like I am part of a bridge from the old to the new. I am not cursing the new, neither am I completely seduced by it. I know the value of storytellers, researchers, novelists, reporters, journalists and truth-seekers. And there are fewer and fewer of these people around. And it is harder and harder to make a living as a writer. Writing and storytelling are being devalued.

So maybe I will be part of the bridge generation. I imagine that when the world went from oral storytelling to written much was lost. And maybe some people had to work to insure that the BEST qualities of oral storytelling could be preserved, even within the new written tradition. I hope I will be one of those people helping to drag the best of the print tradition into the computer tradition.

And finally I hope that I will teach my boys that many of the simplest things in life are not products. I hope to preserve in them a knowledge that as long as they can eat good food, walk outside in nature, sing a song to themselves, tell stories, and laugh with friends, make art and dance, that life will be sweet. More and more I see the power of capitalism in our culture and wonder if anything that is not making money for a corporation will survive into the future--whether it is apples, family dinners or friendship. I hope that quiet knowledge will be a legacy that is passed on to my boys.

Finally, I would like to create beauty. Whether in the form of preserving the environment, growing a garden, making people see stars, or serving a meal that makes people deeply happy, I want to do that. That is the accumulation of a thousand tiny tasks performed over a lifetime. But it matters. Beautiful things stick in people's minds.

That's me on this fine October morning.

What do you want YOUR legacy to be?