Drink your tea slowly.

That was the best advice I received in the first week of 2012. It arrived via Google+, by way of Kevin Rose. It’s actually part of a longer quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, which goes like this:

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.

On one level it’s a simple call for mindfulness: for not taking for granted things as they’re happening, no matter how routine they might be (Headspace’s Andy Puddicombe is fond of inciting people to be mindful when brushing their teeth). I say simple, but that alone is tough enough. On top of that the tea quote is also kind of a neat encapsulation of a Buddhist idea I’ve always struggled with a little: that the past and future, in a very real sense, don’t exist; that the present moment is the entirety of one’s experience of life.

What does that mean exactly? Try explaining it to someone with a toothache who’s holding to make an appointment with the dentist: “Hey, forget getting this thing fixed tomorrow, all that matters is the pain in your mouth right now – enjoy that!”

But the more time you spend thinking about it the closer it gets to making sense. You will never know the future; you will never again know the past – the present is exactly the sum total of your experience. And no matter how many times you brush your teeth (at least twice a day, OK?) or drink a cup of tea, you’d do well to be present in that moment, to pay it the attention it deserves.

That’s a kind of resolution isn’t it?