How Is a Person Like a Teabag? - Helga, 79

As the old saying goes, if you liked somebody, you said, "You are my cup of tea!" But if you hated a person you said, “You old bag!" So put the two together, you have a love-hate object, a very important item—a tea-bag!  All teabags look alike. They are individually wrapped and packed together in a box.  All persons are alike.  They are human beings, but each is individually wrapped, has its own unique characteristics and flavor, and all of us live together in communities, cities, states and countries and the overall big wrapping for us all, our Earth.

A person is like a teabag.  As soon as it gets into hot water, it loses its pale color and becomes heated. The longer a teabag stays in hot water, the stronger the tea becomes. The same with a person. The longer and harder someone has to struggle and fight against adversities of life, the stronger his or her character will become.  This person will be like a good strong tea, a good strong human being.

If one wants an especially strong and good tea for a refreshing summer drink, one has to use a number of teabags, pour boiling water over them, let the mixture cool down, and flavor it with sugar, lemon, etc. There is nothing more refreshing to quench a thirst!

To solve a problem in the state or country, it takes a number of good, strong persons, different minds and opinions.  Pour all these different ideas into a pot and let that mixture stand for a while and cool down.  Flavor it with a little sugar or lemon, that means spice it a little to make it more palatable, and in the long run we all will benefit from it and will be refreshed again from seeing our country moving forward again.

But if you get too greedy and want more out of a teabag, you can use it a number of times.  But every time the tea will get weaker and weaker and in the end you will wind up with no tea at all and a squeezed out teabag. Exactly that sad state of affairs happened to all of us lately. We all became too greedy and wanted more and more tea out of the same old teabag. We brewed and brewed more and more tea.  We wanted to satisfy the thirst of more and more people at home and abroad without putting more work and money into acquiring more teabags. So we came to the point that our dear Uncle Sam looks like a squeezed out old teabag. We hope not to be discarded but filled with new little, green tea leaves to brew many more new cups of tea in the future!

In past history we fought a war because of tea. Maybe if King George of England would have packed his tea leaves into a little teabag and reduced the price on it, he would have not looked like an old bag and lost a colony. But where would it leave us?

The next time drink tea, and see!