Add color to your life and bring smiles to your work
I work as a support worker at Green Thumb, a welfare facility that grows tea using natural farming methods with us. Working with these people, who all have some mental and physical challenges, is a constant learning experience for me.
The people who drink tea and the people who make tea together. I hope that through making tea and through drinking tea, both of them will live rich lives. That is my humble wish.
The simple work I did goes around this world and makes people I've never met laugh. Such a small reason to live adds color to my daily life. There's not much in my monochrome days, but there's red, yellow, and green.
The naturally grown tea we make is a very simple tea, grown without the use of pesticides or fertilizers. The significance lies not in not using pesticides or fertilizers, but in growing it with the power of nature, and the simplicity of it means that it has a strong flavor without any unpleasant taste. Our work is a series of simple tasks, such as weeding, digging holes, harvesting tea leaves, and bagging them. It's a series of "simple tasks" that we do together.
Since last year, our overseas trade has increased, and we have sent a lot of tea mainly to the United States, but also to the United Kingdom and China. Our tea has been well received overseas, and every time we receive an additional order, the smiles of the happy people overseas come to mind.
A simple task goes round and round and round and now I'm making the person in front of me smile. This certain meaning in life adds colour to my daily life. My cheeks are flushed with a warm pink, adding more beautiful colours to my monochrome days.
Working with the welfare center was a great learning opportunity for us. Before, we had been thinking about how to make tea as efficiently as possible, but through the work of making tea, we started to think about how we can enrich the lives of others. I believe that our lives are not only about how to succeed efficiently, and not only about striving to be successful, even if we may not be able to achieve it even if we want to, but also about working with the desire to make the people in front of us smile .
How hard have you worked, how much money have you earned? How smart you are, and do you think it's natural that you should enjoy that? When you feel down when comparing yourself to others, when you feel meaningless, when you feel anxious and like you have no value, it's important to take the time to remember that your simple work is making someone smile, or making the person in front of you smile.
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