I do not have to be a cup of tea

Neither have you. Did you know that?

Oct 05, 2023

Hello my caring friend,

It has been a very transformative week, so I was very much looking forward to sitting with a decaf oat milk latte (and you!) in my favorite Flower cafe, and to processing it gently.

How have you been?

How have your relationships been? With others, with your body, with your heart…

I’m asking because I will write about relationships today.

About the relationships that are not working, to be precise.

It’s been a big focus of my recent experience, as I allow myself to shift, to wake up, to heal, to transform… As I allow myself to meet me, and as I introduce this real me to others. As I witness what others have to say about who I truly am—and how those I love most love me MORE and how those I’m not sure I like very much…do not particularly welcome my new found ways to find meaning and to choose joy.

Those of us who live on the dark side of the moon do not love watching someone becoming happier and happier the more they make hard decisions, face their deepest wounds and hold uncomfortable conversations. It unroots the story that we are defined by what happened to us, by our past, by others. It shakes the victim narrative that we’ve all been asked to subscribe to—even though we prefer to think of martyrdom than victimhood (it might feel the same, but it does look a lot better on paper).

And I understand that, because I’ve been there at times: Not understanding why someone would suddenly decide to change everything (without asking me first!) and why they would look glad to have made that choice, regardless of how unsettling it was for my world’s vision. (The audacity…)

But in order to find our people, we need to share who we are, AND to accept in advance that it will be off putting to those we’re not meant for.

Because there is no being true to ourselves and being for everyone else.

If we’re for everyone, we’re people pleasing our way through life, and no one actually knows us. When we learn who we are though, it becomes really hard to play a role without feeling sick and exhausted.

Denial only works until we know we’re in denial.

I read once that we do not have to be who we are not in order for everyone to like us, we have to be who we truly are in order for our people to find us. That person highlighted that WE DO NOT HAVE TO BE A CUP OF TEA. And that phrasing changed something in me.

Because we really don’t have to be a cup of tea… and why would we even try?

I don’t want to be your cup of tea, I want to be your friend. I don’t want everyone to like me, I only think I do because it still hurts when someone doesn’t… Because I make it mean something about me, instead of realizing it’s just an unwarranted attempt at connection.

More and more people are starting the conversation on the courage it takes to be disliked! And I think that’s such an important message.

It’s not a hard thing per se, when we really think about it. Being who we are only requires us to be who we are. It requires us to drop the act, to stop trying so hard. It requires LESS doing, not more! It requires however A TON of courage.

The more we tell ourselves that being disliked is hard, the more we reinforce the narrative that it’s dangerous. We must stop doing that to ourselves. Because it’s not dangerous, it’s scary. And that’s a big difference:

There’s wisdom in fearing danger; there’s wisdom in checking if what we fear is dangerous.

It takes tremendous amounts of humility, integrity and courage to give ourselves the chance to check that we can indeed be okay, even when someone does not like us that much. We’re usually not keen on finding out if we even can survive someone that we don’t like not liking us. That’s how much we need to be liked. And that makes sense… We’re wired for connection—through the origins of our species, and as a former little human.

A few centuries ago, we fully depended on belonging to a group to survive. If someone disliked us we risked being ostracized, which could mean a quite certain death—either at the hands of our co-constituents or, before that, between the teeth of a wild animal. We learned that we’re stronger together, at the very least in the physical sense. And as children, we are no one without an adult to care for us... We won’t survive without an adult to feed and shield us. We learn that if we get abandoned, we’re pretty much done… and that is true for a few years at least, and still relevant for our first decade on Earth (and the greatest part of the second one).

I keep coming back to Gabor Mate’s foundational insights that our two core needs as humans are authenticity and connection. We need authenticity first and foremost to thrive, but we need connection a lot more to survive the beginning of our life. Some of us never get the chance to discover that it doesn’t stay this way as we age, grow, deepen and expand.

Again, it takes tremendous amounts of humility, integrity and courage to give ourselves the chance to check that we can indeed be okay, and all of those attributes require self-confidence… self-confidence that can only be built by self-trust! Which is a product of a healthy self-esteem.

Indeed without a good amount of self-esteem we cannot have our own back, and if we don’t have our own back, we desperately need the back of those around us to support us.

That’s why self-care matters so very much… because self-care is the foundation of self-love. We cannot love someone who mistreats us, neglects us, loathes us. We try, and we call it love! but that’s only a trauma bond. Self-care is the foundation of self-love, and the surest way to build self-trust… and once we trust ourselves, we can trust what we’ve always known about us: the truth of who we are. Both as a human soul rooted in oneness, compassion and light, and as a human person who has needs, tastes, dislikes, preferences and most importantly DREAMS—dreams that are meant to come true as we slowly but surely find our way home.

Through self-care, we find self-love and self-trust and that opens the door to self-creation… the greatest journey we’ll ever take and the greatest reward we can hope for on Earth. And it’s so nice when hope is something that is 100% in our control.

So I’m asking us to make a choice right here and right now. I’m asking us to choose us, our dreams, our integrity, our heart, and to understand that yes we risk losing some “others” on our way back to wholeness, but we also open ourselves to meeting all the “others” we’re yearning to connect and share our lived experience with.

I’m asking us to declare that we’re ready—or at the very least willing—to realize that WE DO NOT HAVE TO BE A CUP OF TEA.

Being a cup of tea is not a very interesting goal or a particularly worthy pursuit. Being a cup of tea is great when you’re a cup of tea, you’ll be especially popular in England, but being a cup of tea is the least ambitious choice a human being could make—and more importantly a dream stealer, a love murderer, a hope crusher, a resentment seller and the end of all that makes Life so precious, fascinating and vibrant.

We do not have to be a cup of tea to be happy. Someone’s dislike of you says nothing about you. It says something about what they think and need, in order to feel good. It shows what stories they tell themselves about the world and who fits in their stories or not. It’s the same for the people we like and for those we don’t. “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined”. Tony Morrison taught us that.

What matters is that you like you. What matters is how you look at yourself in the mirror… What matters is what is true, not what someone thinks is true. I know people who say I’m the kindest person they’ve ever met. My mother, on the other end, said that my birth was a worse fate for the world than Hitler’s. I’m the same person in both cases...

I feel better when people say they love me for sure (!), and I feel my lungs sink into a sea of grief every time I let my mother’s words reach my awareness again. But what matters is actually only and ever what I think of myself. What matters is how I choose to show up and behave.

If someone I don’t particularly admire and don’t need to have interactions with criticizes me, I know better than to dwell on it. I know that we just have misguided views of each other, and that our current beliefs don’t align. I understand that’s the reason we feel separate. That’s why we forget that we’re all good inside and always trying our best in the face of often triggering situations—situations squashing our sense of safety and our sense of worth… and we all lose our way when we try to grasp on any of those.

Now if someone I either like or must communicate with on a regular basis sees me as an enemy—or even just as an inconvenience—I collapse…or at least a part of me does. A very young tender part who doesn’t realize that everyone is not my parents and that I can actually find my own food and shelter… or well of love without their help now. That part believes that if anyone dislikes me that means that my mother was right. I am bad, I am evil even. I need to not exist, I need to disappear, I need to die. But I’m teaching that little part a new way of seeing the world. I’m showing her a magical realm where everyone has different needs and wants on the surface, and that’s why it’s such a colorful and lively movie to watch! I’m showing her also that we all share the same essence, and that any magic in someone else I possess, just as any magic someone sees in me is also in everyone else.

And that’s why we don’t need everyone else’s magic. We need our magic. That’s it. That’s MORE than enough. And then we get to share our magic with those whose specific flavor magic resonates with ours. It is that simple.

None of us actually have the time and energy to share our magic with everyone else’s (there are 8 billions of us), nor do we have the time and capacity to receive everyone else’s magic (8 bi-llions).

That’s why this system that God seems to have created works a lot better than the one the ego would have preferred. We’re all someone’s people, and we all have someones who are our people. And the more we remain with those we’re not meant for, the more alone our true people are, and the more lonely we feel when we go to bed at night.

So here’s the solution: Let’s pledge to never be a cup of tea again. Let’s pledge to be either someone’s choice and person, OR to be someone’s gentle invitation to keep walking and forget about us.

Share Care.check

Being unconditionally loving has nothing to do with loving every person on the surface of the Earth. It means that we remember that everyone is made of love, to love and for love. It doesn’t imply they’re meant to like us or to love us up close. It doesn’t imply we’re meant to like them and, yes, we can love them from a distance. We don’t even have to cross their path again—till death do us part…or even beyond (if there’s a beyond).

It takes tremendous amounts of energy to make someone who doesn’t like us like us… and if we have to change who we are for them to like us, they still don’t like us! They like a fictional character.

It takes tremendous amounts of energy to learn how to come back to ourselves also; that’s true. But in that case we get to find out who we are, and to meet those who will love us, not despite our personality but BECAUSE of all we are. Isn’t that a better way to put our precious energy into the world?

You do not have to be a cup of tea. You only have to be you. That’s more than enough. That’s magical… That’s true.

I do not have to be a cup of tea

Neither have you. Did you know that?

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