It occurred to me that the initial spark for what will no doubt be a perennial interest and enthusiasm in tea was none other than love. It is a weird sentiment to hold about what is for some, no more than a beverage interchangeable with other liquids. In the imagination, tea may evoke comfort on a drizzly slate grey winter day; it may evoke the quiet conformity of the Japanese ceremonies; it may evoke a mysticism from folklore of tea leaf readers; it may evoke a hurriedness as while being gulped, the free arm trying to find its way through a coat sleeve. Odd to evoke love though, not a memory but the thing itself.

When I met certain teachers in China and sat down at their tea table for the first time, I had tasted very few beyond the selection available in my local corner Starbucks. Not caring one way or the other, what I knew or didn’t, they shared their best without hesitation. Aged teas of various vintages were brought out of ceramic containers on high shelves. When coveted pre-Qingming Longjing came from Hangzhou, that’s what they brewed. I didn’t recognize the names of the mountains and regions from whence the teas came, but those visible facts were of secondary importance. The direct experience in that moment was paramount. Knowing nothing was an advantage, it turned out. I was free to come to each experience with total openness, simply curious to taste the inviting dark brew in front of me.

And it is only now, many years later, many tea mountains traversed, and many gallons of tea down the hatchet, that I realized the purity in their sharing. I was not a high-ranking Politburo official who held sway over a project they were involved. Nor was it because they knew my parents, etc. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is a love that is like the sun, shining always and everywhere without preference. It is a love I now recognize to be from the mature, which I am quick to clarity does not necessarily imply older age. An infant requires to be nursed and protected by others but by adulthood can manage reasonably well on its own; it can at least scramble some eggs without setting off the smoke alarm, behave agreeably in public spaces, and god-willing is potty-trained.

The equivalent holds for love. In its earlier stages from which many never graduate, the emphasis is on receiving. Isn’t that why people ceaselessly swiping left and right on dating apps with the deep determination to find their perfect half? To their dying day, it’s still a two-pronged movement of desire to be loved and fear of not being loved. Many have families and pay taxes but never reach adulthood by this measure.

Those who do enter adulthood have found the source of love within. The result is a love that expresses itself through sharing and giving. It celebrates itself. For my teachers, it was never even about maintaining some vague ratio to balance the giving and receiving either. Just the giving. The most natural action for them, I observed. It seems a subtle shift, but it is one of great magnitude, more felt than seen.

Long after the incense has burnt and the tea drank, something remains. The original studio that is so deeply etched in folds of memory has long been sold, and those bright, halcyon days sitting around the tea table together have passed. But something lingers wherever and whenever I may be breaking open a new bing of puer or steeping a new find. The perfume of love.