Hey guys, it's Non here.
Coffee in hand — and today that is not a throwaway line. My father carried a tea flask to work every day of his working life and came home with it empty. I grew up watching a man run himself on one hot drink and a fixed routine. I did not inherit the tea.
I inherited the ritual.
I used to watch my father get into the car, and there was this specific moment that stays with me. He would sit behind the wheel. And even though there was a cup holder right there on the side, he would reach out and ask me to hold his tea flask for him while he drove. I was just a kid, and I held that heavy, hot container. I could see the faint trail of steam rising and smell the sharp aroma of the tea.
He was a man who lived by a strict internal clock. He got up early, he stayed at his desk until the work was done. And he came home just in time to sleep so he could do it all again the next morning. He didn't go out. He didn't socialize.
He just moved through the day, one sip of tea at a time, until the flask was empty. Now, you might think I’m telling you a story about a man who liked a specific drink. Or maybe you think it’s a story about a father who was just really dedicated to his job. But that isn't the point.
The point is the weight of what I was holding in my hands. When my parents let me hold that flask, they were doing something much bigger than giving me a task. They were handing me a piece of their life's machinery. They were teaching me that things get done through steady, repetitive actions, even the ones that feel heavy or tiring.
This is the part worth stealing. Most of us think we inherit our parents' possessions or their names. But the real inheritance is the invisible architecture of their habits. If you don't understand what these habits are actually teaching you, you risk spending your whole life repeating their movements without ever knowing why you are moving at all.
We are going to look at what it costs to live a life of inherited rituals without knowing the meaning behind them.
My father’s life was governed by a rhythm that seemed almost biological. It wasn't just that he liked tea; it was that he lived through the tea. He was a man who viewed the world as a series of tasks to be completed with precision. He didn't just do his job; he inhabited a specific way of being a worker.
He got up early, never late for work, spent all his time at his desk getting his job done, took only little time to eat, returned home right afterwards and never went out to socialize, tucked in early in order to get ready for the next day. His work ethics (except the not going out to socialize part) have always been the model of my very own. Actually, I am not being very fair to my dad. When I say I am not being fair to him, I mean that we often simplify the people we love into a single trait.
We say, "My father was a hard worker." But that is a flat description. It doesn't capture the cost of that hardness. To be that way, he had to sacrifice parts of himself.
He had to say no to the spontaneous invitation, the long dinner, the extra hour of rest. He traded those things for a sense of duty. I inherited that duty, but I didn't necessarily inherit his reasons for it. I picked up the pace of his life without always knowing what he was trying to outrun or what he was trying to build.
This brings us to a hard truth about how we become who we are. We are often handed responsibilities before we are ready to feel the weight of them. My parents were busy people. They didn't hover over me with instructions.
They were mature decision-makers, and because they were, they let me make my own choices. They expected me to own the consequences. This is a heavy thing for a child. It means that if I made a mistake, there was no safety net of "because I told you so."
I had to face the mess I made. This actually puts me in the same position as a thinker named Jean-Paul Sartre. He was a man who was deeply unsettled by the idea that there is no pre-written script for our lives. He worried that if there is no script, we are essentially "condemned to be free."
This means we are forced to choose who we are at every single moment, and because we choose, we are entirely responsible for what happens next. If I look at my life through Sartre's eyes, I see that my parents weren't just giving me "freedom." They were pushing me into the terrifying reality of being the author of my own life. By letting me fail and then forcing me to fix it, they were making me realize that there is no one coming to save me from my own bad choices.
I had to become the person who solves the problem. That is a lonely realization, but it is also the only way to actually own your life. I think my parents understood this better than most. They knew that a child who is always told what to do is just a puppet.
A puppet doesn't have to deal with consequences; the puppeteer does. By letting me hold the flask—and by letting me make the mistakes—they were making sure I wasn't a puppet. They were making sure that when I finally stood on my own, I wouldn't be surprised by the weight of the world. I would already know how to carry it.
You might be right to push back on this. You could say that this view is a bit too romantic, or maybe even a bit harsh. You could argue that my parents weren't trying to make me an "author of my own life" in some grand, philosophical sense. Maybe they were just tired.
Maybe they were just busy people who didn't have the time or the energy to micromanage every single thing I did. In that version of the story, my freedom isn't a deliberate gift or a heavy responsibility. It’s just a byproduct of their lack of bandwidth. It’s not a profound lesson on existence; it’s just the way things happened because they were preoccupied with their own work.
That is a fair point. It’s a very human way to look at it. If we assume that every parent who doesn't hover over their child is trying to create a "mature decision-maker," we are projecting a lot of intentionality onto people who might just be trying to survive the day. It’s much more likely that they were simply living their lives, and I was moving alongside them in the space they left open.
But here is where I have to disagree with that simpler version. If we say their behavior was just a lack of bandwidth, we lose the most important part of the inheritance. We turn a meaningful structure into a random accident. Think about the difference.
If I am left alone because my parents are too busy to care, I am just a person who is alone. But if I am left alone because my parents believe I am capable of making a choice and owning the mistake, I am a person who is being trained. One is a vacuum; the other is a classroom. I believe the truth sits in the middle, but it leans toward the latter.
Even if they weren't thinking about Sartre or "existential freedom" while they were working at their desks, they were modeling a specific way of moving through the world. By not hovering, they were creating a space where I had to develop my own internal compass. They were handing me the tools of adulthood without giving me the manual. They honestly loved his job and he never allowed anything to get in the way, including the temptation of corruption.
Drinking tea was my father's ritual. But I am sure the caffeine in the strong tea that he consumed (the brand was Three Horses, which is still available in any supermarket today) also played a role in his pathological addiction. In the 2000s, even after he had retired, he still brewed his own tea everyday. When I say that, I mean that my father’s life was defined by a commitment to a goal that stayed steady even when the external reasons for that goal disappeared. He didn't drink the tea because he had to; he drank it because it was the way he chose to structure his day.
He taught me that we don't just do things because we have to. We do things because we decide what our life is going to look like, and then we show up and do the work.
Although there's a small cup holder on the right hand side of the wheel, he always trusted me more to hold the cup for him when he had to operate the moving car. The aroma and the light smoke that came out of the top of the tubular flask was the evidence that the tea he drank was always hot.
It's true that I called my parents from time to time, and thought of them also as my best friends on top of being my most revered role models. But when it came to decision-making I was left to do it alone. I did not grow up being hovered over by my parents suggesting me what I should do. They were busy, and that was one of the reasons why they could not possibly be hovering over me. When I say they were busy, I mean they were moving with purpose.
They weren't just occupied; they were committed to the work of living. They created a space where I had to find my own footing. But here is the part that keeps me up. If we are the authors of our own lives. And we are constantly making choices based on these inherited habits, how do we know which parts of our internal compass belong to us and which parts belong to the people who raised us?
How much of your own will is actually just a very well-practiced echo of someone else’s routine?