Illustration by Denis Zilber |
If anyone has been called a tea snob, the reaction to this name calling can be rather appalling at first and most definitely unexpected and depending on the source it is coming from will stimulate a range of emotions from hurt to the understanding of people’s sheer ignorance about anything and everything.
Whether one drinks tea from a teabag (which is not necessarily a sign of humility or simplicity) or drinks the most rare and expensive tea on the planet does not make one a snob of the tea world. As my very wise and ornery grandmother use to remind me, there is nothing new in this world. Just old ideas recycled into new ones and new ideas becoming old. The bottom line is, no one holds the monopoly on knowledge or being right, just keep an open mind.
The idea behind being a tea snob or a snob of anything provokes a wanting to lay down the foundation to elevate such accusatory consciousness.
Firstly, the vocabulary for the word snob can be expanded to such words as:
- Enthusiast
- Connoisseur
- Fancier
- Elitist
- Judge
- Expert
- Authority
- Mavin
- Person of good taste
- Cognoscente
- Epicure
- Gourmet
- Fan
- Gourmand
- Buff
- Devotee
- Aficionado
- Fanatic
- Addict
- Freak
- Nut
- Bug
- Fondness
- Yen
Well you get my drift. There in itself is the first step to shoving this consciousness from judgmental to educational.
Expanding one’s vocabulary expands one’s tea taste buds. Now a whole new world has opened up and all that one has to do is walk through the door and discover the wonderment and gloriousness of the tea world. We, after all live within a microcosm, of a macrocosm.
So, the next time you call yourself, or someone else calls you a tea snob, understand that your first responsibility is to expand the consciousness to this human heritage. Tea belongs to the human race and a few cultures on this planet have been the guardians to this ancient relic.
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