tea and books and comfort

Lately I've been thinking about comfort zones a bit and things that make us want to step out of them. And also things that generally make us feel uncomfortable and how we react to them. In yoga we're encouraged to stay with a pose that we want to flee from (for me that's backbends) because it helps us to work with the uncomfortable things life throws at us.

At work some of us have found ourselves reading the same books at the moment (completely coincidental) and have been heatedly discussing our reactions to them. Books like 'The Slap' and 'Revolutionary Road'. These 2 in particular create strong reactions in people. I loved reading RR even though the characters are quite sad (no, I have not seen the film yet). I'm fascinated with the idea of people having to come to grips with 'being ordinary' when they imagined their lives would be so much more. I like that it pushed me out of my comfort zone. My colleagues at work found RR hard to read, almost painful, and really did not like it. I liked it so much I bought Richard Yates's collected short stories yesterday. I wished he'd written more while he was alive.

I know this is a bit of a stretch but drinking different tea can push me out of my comfort zone at times. You know how you have your favourites and stepping away from them to try new ones can be bit like hard work. Last week I bought some Rose Black Tea mostly because of that pretty tin (pic above). I'd never heard of this tea before. When I got home I made a pot and tasted it. It's a bit rosey but not bad. I googled it and sure enough there are rose petals or rose hips in there with black tea. Even though I bought it for the tin I am going to drink the tea too. I'm not going to be the girl who always drinks green tea and earl grey. No way. But I will draw the line at lapsang souchong.