Small Rituals, Big Shifts

A small promise that changed the shape of my days — and my life

I made a promise to myself a couple of years ago.

I promised to say yes to the uncomfortable excitement.

You know exactly what I mean: the things that tickle your fancy, but may not necessarily make practical sense. The ideas that feel a little irrational, a little inconvenient, and yet somehow… alive. I’ve always admired the people who boldly walk toward something that doesn’t make sense at first. The ones who trust a pull before they have proof.

So what is the winning formula?

I think it starts with asking yourself what you value.

Name it.
Write it down.
Practice looking at that list every day.

If you value peace, ask yourself what brings you peace without requiring much.

I realized that I didn’t need a giant life overhaul. I needed small, consistent rituals. Things that connected me back to myself without costing a thing, except my own commitment.

As I got curious about what I valued, slowness and curiosity began to rise in my awareness.

How do I slow down?
How do I return to my childlike curiosity?

I thought of one of my dearest friends, whom I admire, love, and respect with my whole heart. For the sake of her privacy, I’ll refer to her as B.

When I met B in 2017, she was serving in the Air Force and in the middle of a metamorphosis, transitioning back into civilian life, going through a divorce, and slowly coming home to herself. At the time, I felt like a ghost. I had just come out of a year of grieving after a major tragedy took place in my family (we’ll touch on this in a later story), and I couldn’t even comprehend what “coming home to the self” meant.

Watching B in her Malibu studio, as she slowly plucked sunflower sprouts and garnished two bowls of pasta for us with a small smile on her face, I knew she was tapping into something I wasn’t aware of yet. BTW - B’s presence is so special it draws wild deer to her door.

Shortly thereafter, my beautiful friend B moved to Asia, where her spirit called her forward to sitting with tea.

For those of you who are new to tea ceremony, it’s an ancient tradition shaped by Zen and rooted in a lineage where tea is prepared with gentleness and presence. There isn’t a goal. It’s simply to be and observe.

The couple of times I sat with tea with B, I noticed things I didn’t know I’d been rushing past my whole life. I watched the tea leaves float slowly to the bottom of the cup after each fragrant sip. I caught the reflection of my face inside the glass.

There it was, the interconnectedness of it all. Seeing myself in B, in tea, in all of life.

It was so simple… and yet somehow cosmic. Sitting in that stillness expanded my awareness and senses in a way I had never experienced before.

Almost ten years later, my beautiful friend B now lives in Taiwan. She still drinks tea.

Tea became one of those things I started to value because it offered reflection and peace.

I started pouring myself a cup of herbal tea in the morning, watching the leaves drift downward, and then freeform writing for ten minutes. That’s how I began my day.

And the strange thing is, once you begin practicing slowness, you start noticing what’s been calling you for a long time. You begin hearing your own life more clearly. You stop forcing answers, and they begin arriving.

In hindsight, I can see it now. So much of what I was searching for was already forming inside the cup. The patterns were there all along. It took a few fateful events to fill in the blanks, but here I am, present to the path and the patterns that brought me to this point. Ritual has been the access point to saying yes to the uncomfortable excitement.

The move to Athens didn’t come out of nowhere. It wasn’t impulsive. It was inevitable. It was the natural next step of a person learning how to listen to herself again. The uncomfortable excitement had been guiding me for months, gently turning my body toward a new rhythm, a new pace, a new home.

What does all of this mean?

Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

We make meaning out of what rises in us, good or bad. But if this is meant to mean something, perhaps it’s this:

Get curious about what you value, and begin incorporating more of it into your days.

Because what you might find is that everything you’re looking for is already right inside the tea cup.

And if you lay down the leaves of your cup, maybe you’ll find the path, too.