Tea Time in America

Or Tiempo de Siesta. Whatever. So long as I get a break in the afternoon

The English have tea time. The Spanish have their siestas. What do Americans have?

Overtime.

The older I get, the more I think that’s a whole bunch of hooey.

We pretend to be so civilized. Like what we have is something worth studying and preserving. But what is it, exactly? Working our tails off to pay insurance premiums so that our insurance companies can afford the ever-increasing postage on the denial letters for necessary coverage. That’s what.

I mean, granted, I’m old enough to have entered crone territory, but come about 2:30, 3 o’clock, and I’m ready for a little rest. Sitting on a chintz sofa drinking Earl Gray out of a china cup in front of a selection of finger sandwiches and petit fours sounds lovely, no? Pulling down the shades of the windows against the afternoon sun and closing my eyes for a moment to regroup—divine! Knuckling down for hour six or seven of a work day with three more to go? Not so much.

I have, historically, been proud of my ability to power through. The time I went to court with double pneumonia. The time I sat in a judge’s chambers with a whanger of a migraine arguing my client’s case during a pretrial, stood up, asked for the bathroom, headed there, threw up, then came back and finished my job. The four years when my children were young when I didn’t get three hours in a row of sleep ever.

Looking back on it, however, I don’t think it’s the flex I thought it was at the time. Was it an impressive feat of self-discipline? Sure. Was it also an impressive display of self-harm disguised as work ethic? Yes, that, too. My inability to draw boundaries to protect myself shouldn’t be lauded, it should be used as a cautionary tale. It’s why I’m little more than a tired husk now, good for not much more than watching mind-numbing television and knitting scarves.[1]

What’s stopping me/you/us from just coming to a screeching halt at three p.m. every afternoon and drinking tea or taking a nap or strolling around the neighborhood or whatever it is that resets your internal machine? It’s the fact that everyone else is still chugging along and peer pressure is monstrous. But what if we all agreed. What if we shut down the internet at three, closed down businesses, allowed a hush to come over the world? What if?

I get it, in these divided political times we have trouble agreeing that grass is green and the sky is blue.[2]

But can’t we all agree that we could all use a break now and again? Like, every afternoon at three?

Let’s try it for a week and see what happens.

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[1] This is not actually true. I still have an inability to draw boundaries to protect myself. All I *want* to do is watch mind-numbing television and knit scarves. In reality and against my will, I do quite a bit more.

[2] Honestly, as I look out the window, the grass is brown and the sky is grey, so….