Stuck in Habits...

There were a couple years of my life when I tried to live my life sans my cuppa chai and all I remember is a foggy mind and an intense need to make my morning cuppa....feeling virtuous every time I didn't make myself a cup but intensely missing it all the same. I reveled in my trips to India - the full fat milk, the tea laden with sugar and cardamom and made the old fashioned way on the stove-top -- slowly, with love, no short-cuts there. Conversations with Bapa, Ma forcing me to have a Marie biscuit to avoid getting acidity and the smell of newspaper print...as Bapa read his news and me holding my head at a weird angle so that I could  read the comic strip at the back of the paper...it was the companionship, the love and warmth in the morning just before we went on with our day...that I am still stuck on...
Our mornings now are a mad rush to - get snack bags and lunch boxes packed, 6 AM conference calls (for him), hurried emails (for me), instant coffee (for him), hot chocolate (for kiddo) and instant tea (for me), the constant drill of finishing on time and get out of the house...not a minute to stretch, smile and welcome the day graciously and with open arms.

So today, when "P" sent me this Dilbert clip that made me chuckle in the morning  (some friends just know when I need a pick me up) ---

I decided  to wake up with a stretch and a smile and welcome the day sans shortcuts

Tomorrow - I will go back to short-cuts but for today I choose to be "Stuck in Habits"...drink my cuppa chai made my special way and remember the newspaper, the marie biscuit and Bapa...

As Stephen King aptly put it -

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”