[Comic Essay] "Kissako" - 3 Minutes of Inefficiency Can Save Your Future Self 10 Years From Now

We live our lives today packing every minute and second as if we were forcibly pushing sand through an hourglass with our fingers.
However, when we suddenly look in the mirror, the saying "Youth is easily lost, learning is hard to master" might pierce our hearts like a joke that isn't funny.
It is that sense of impatience where, even though knowledge can be obtained in an instant on a smartphone, nothing seems to have become part of our own flesh and blood.

It happened during a meeting where troubles kept piling up at work and my head felt like it was boiling.
While everyone was raising their voices in search of the shortest route to the correct answer, one veteran said,
"Well, let's have some tea."
Is this the modern version of "Kissako"?

In a business environment that values efficiency, it takes courage to stop what you are doing.
However, the few minutes it takes to boil water and wait for the tea leaves to open are by no means "empty space."
It is like a ritual to shut down a runaway brain and reboot the OS that is yourself.

Perhaps the reason the Japanese loved the tedious procedures of "tea ceremony" was to create a "sanctuary called inefficiency" within their daily lives.

Youth is easily lost, learning is hard to master.
The "learning" that Zhu Xi lamented as being "hard to master" may not be the mere accumulation of information, but the texture of life itself that only emerges in such silence.

If you only pack things in efficiently, your thoughts will not ferment.
Sipping tea and taking a breath. That seemingly wasteful margin should become the magic seasoning that transforms the time of aging from "mere consumption" into "rich experience."

Now, let's leave the next notification for a little while,

How about a cup for yourself, too?