There is nothing more seductive than the early morning brew. The first sip that brings with it a measure of warmth, understanding and purity that can only be imagined with other legal beverages. It's the truckdriver's friend, the housewife's companion, so heavy with tannin it'd rip the enamel off your back teeth. We are first among the great tea-drinking nations of the world. Our tea ceremony has an earthly honesty about it. It is a ceremony that doesn't stand on ceremony. There is nothing like a decent cuppa to resurrect the heart of the downtrodden, to fortify the weak and find the lost. Yet the meek divinity of the Aussie tea ceremony is under threat.

Look at the coffee-slurping multitudes with crusts of foam solidifying on their upper lips. Is there anything more disturbing in the early hours of the morning than finding an acquaintance who's brown-nosed a mocha? Or bent the ear of a barista until it is bleeding with countless infantile instructions on how to construct a particular morning pick-me-up. It's this desperate need to be noticed that has resulted in thousands of variants of the bean-based libation. Does a taste that truly satisfies continue to elude these devotees of the Coffea arabica? Where has their torrid search left them? With agitated limbs, blood-rimmed eyes lurching from skulls on vein-ridden stalks, and talking nonsense until the shaking stops. Consider now the drinker of tea: restrained, contemplative, and sure of his place in the world. Tea has always had a spiritual basis while coffee has merely greased the wheels of industry.

Coffee houses sprang up in the 17th century as centres for business. In Europe they were formed in conjunction with insurance companies as a way of seducing customers, while in New York's Merchant's coffee-house, treason was discussed*. Coffee continues to fuel business to this day. The tedious habits of the addicted coffee consumer have been mocked and ridiculed to such a degree that I believe there is nothing constructive I can add. Suffice to say that in the inner city, the ordering of coffee is as emotionally deadly as a descent into the circles of hell.

And yet coffee is not the only enemy. Today, tea is also under fire from a diverse range of supposedly healthy, lifestyle enhancing, spiritually robust herbal substitutes. Trading on the illustrious histoy of the one true leaf, these pretenders to the crown, these usurpers, claim to cure every ailment from acne to xenophobia. They're sealed in designer boxes and available in "better stores". They're festooned with pithy comments, justifications and copious notes on their application or digestion. They're alchemic combinations of dried flower stems and overzealously pulped fruits, and they have the taste of watered-down incense. If nature had a bowel, this is the sort of crap that would collect in cancerous pools along the alimentary canal. To harvest it, to seal it in a flow-through bag, to call it "tea" is anathema to all real tea drinkers.

In the East it's suggested the first teapot was formed by Prince Bodhi-Dharma's eyelids. He removed them to stop him falling asleep while he was meditating. Here in the West, tea is just as rich with religious resonance, its common form in this country has three equally powerful components, and thus mirrors the unity and diversity of the Holy Trinity: tea, water (the eternal life force), and full-fat milk (life is too short to skim). As St Thomas Aquinas completed his glorious argument for the existence of God, The Five Ways, he is said to have, cried: "All life, thought and excellence flow from the spout."

A decent cup of tea, white or black, can soothe all society's ills, real or imagined. There's no need for sticks and twigs claiming to be panaceas for the spiritually deficient, or the jittery caffeine-induced panic of the latte drinker. in this life let us always thirst for the truth, and in that thirst let us be sustained by tea.

* Would this great nation be any wiser had not hundreds of boxes of tea been demped into Boston Harbour?

She had visited an Internet site that makes a calculation based on the average life expectancy. You type in your basic details and it gives you a date. What morbid fascination had drawn her to the site eludes me still. It also distressed me that her date for departure was a good 30 years after mine. She had 30 years to party on in the wonderful world of the future. The other unsettling aspect of the prediction was that I am destined to leave this Earth sometime mind-morning on December 25, 2036*. I didn't want to abandon this ball of dust and spit. I didn't want to accept the fact there was an end to all this sorrow and frivolity, there's just too much to look forward to.

Our knowledge of ourselves has changed dramatically over the centuries. Especially our concept of age. Children are pubescent these days around the age of eight. The teenage years of wonder, narcissism and sexual exploration can last well into the twenties. While, if you're determined, you can now make your twenties last until your fifties.

In our times, people are less inclined to be responsible. Our marriage and birth rates have declined as we tenaciously pursue fun. We're living longer and enjoying life more (and if we're not enjoying life as much as we could be, there's an awesome arsenal of antidepressants to cheer us up). Who wants it to stop? What other age has offered so much? How hellish would life have been before the invention of spectacles in 1303? And when we could see clearly, what was there to look forward to? The abolition of the poll tax (1381), radical advancements in pulleys, another bout of scurvy?

In 1777, Dr Samuel Johnson said, "When a man is tired of London he is tired of life." Yet it was proven by the Burton Society in 1857 that you could be tired of London in just under three weeks if you had no money. Thus we arrive at the Victorian age, and now what is there to entice us? The last instalment of Bleak House? Seeing an ankle before you die? Inventing a new and fascinating way of eating a potato?

Until the beginning of the 20th century, life idled along from one generation to the next. Apart from the hem of women's skirts and facial hair on men, nothing much changed from on lifetime to another. In days gone by it must have been a pleasure to get your marching orders in the next world. Even if technologically advanced West, going to the toilet has become an enjoyable experience only in the past 50 years.

Over the centuries these discoveries have been fascinating but, compared to the rate of change over the past 100 years, they're nothing. Every day there are more questions. what will happen in the fields of biotechnology, genetic engineering and virology? What will Voyager discover beyond our solar system? Will we ever achieve a united peace for all peoples of all countries based on egalitarian systems of government, economic reform and decent TV?

But these are the mere tip if the ideological iceberg. What about the eternal questions? Will Macaulay Culkin ever make a comeback? Will there be a Notting Hill 2? Will someone assassinate Jerry Springer?

This is the worst age to be alive; give us physical pain of the past, not the mental anguish of never knowing the answers. The future is here, now, tumbling around us constantly. We can no longer stop it than we could stop the sun from rising. No other age can compare to the trauma it inflicts on the human heart. Imagine what wonders await us in the next ten years, the next 50, the next 100. Imagine never knowing what these are. Each new discovery opens hundreds of doors to possibilities we've only ever dreamed of. Almost daily, the mysteries of life unravelling before us. We're learning more, understanding more, and thus we'll miss out on more when we go to the great beyond. Is it any wonder no-one wants to leave? For me there is only one remaining question: what will happen after December 25, 2036? I'd give the world to find out.

*The other unsettling aspect was being told I'd go belly up on Christmas Day. That's going to make a hole in anyone's holiday. To think, after a lifetime of moderate struggle, I will be remembered as the selfish old goat who ruined the family Christmas of 2036.

I first read about the unnatural order of things in the Presbyterian Ladies Handbook of 1906. Four years later I was able to cross-reference the rather graphic material there with a chapter in Happy Homemakers. A Religious Guide To Modern Living, from 1872. However, it wasn't until the publication of The American Journal Of Interpersonal Relationships in June this year that I was able to correlate the information in the other two books. Information that suggests everything is not quite as it appears.

It's often been asserted that we influence our surroundings by our moods. But to suggest this has a physical effect on the world has always been a matter of some dispute. Just as certain people radiate joy, there are those who radiate something else. We're all in a state of entropy, but some of us are degrading more rapidly - we may even be degrading others. The much-loved human touch is fiercely corrosive. The sweat and weight of our hands can smooth marble or polish brass. We've seen the damage our grubby, acidic fingers do every time we touch each other or ourselves. But there are some who have this effect on their environment without the need of touch. They may do it through words or ideas, and sometimes just being there makes things spoil. The Ladies Handbook demonstrates this beautifully by listing three different types of people in the world:

The first group comprises the "peacemakers". Armed with life-affirming platitudes, cute button noses and screamingly sincere auras, they skip along the street arm in arm in wonder. These people create harmony wherever they go and their mere presence brings a sense of peace. It's important to note they're relatively scarce.

The second group is where the bulk of humanity resides, Homer Simpson is revered as the archetype and worshipped in some circles as a god. Here people are content, addicted to chocolate or alcoholic pacifiers, and joyously inert.

In the third section there are those who, through no fault of their own, have a tendency to break things.

I belong in this category, but it's been a long, hard journey to get me to this realisation. I have questioned it, examined it and found no other solution. The common denominator in the wanton destruction that takes place around me is me, I am the epicentre of menace, the focal point of failure. I have finally accepted the fact that when an object is placed in close proximity to me it will age more rapidly, expire, corrode, self-destruct or have an emotional episode. It doesn't seem to make much difference what it is: food will spoil, jams will sour and farm machinery will fail. Silver becomes tarnished, gold turns to lead, watchbands putrefy on my wrist. Computers breakdown when I touch them. Toasters explode in dazzlingly surreal displays of light. Animals seek any avenue to escape from me. On occasion, when I have been stationary, domesticated beasts have urinated liberally on my lower limbs in order to display their disgust.

To discover where you belong, there's an easy test: Keep a freshly opened carton of milk nearby as you work. If the milk, within half an hour of exposure to you, sours or begins to form a putrid skin, seek help. (For your own peace of mind, try this on a cold day.) If you can't find any milk, try asking yourself these questions: Is your TV's remote held together with stickytape? Does your mobile phone still have an aerial? Do you have a seemingly insurmountable problem involving unwanted body hair? Do you think open fires are infinitely more fascinating than human beings? Do you ever drive by sense of feel? Have you ever been mistaken for other members of your family by your parents? Do you have two bags permanently packed and ready to leave beneath your eyes? Do you ever think the reindeer is a dispensable animal? Why can't you be bothered finding the milk? Do you work for Telstra?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you probably belong in the final category. This is nothing to be ashamed of. We're the bacteria of social interaction -- we break down the mulch of society and turn it into fertiliser. We're as essential as negativity. Without us, people would have nothing with which to compare their happiness. So even if you're a total failure, a black hole of abject misery, don't be concerned, for you fulfil an important role in the grand scheme of unnatural things.

I took the path less travelled, heading up a hill and away from the seething Sunday mass of fornicators, picnickers and fawning parents. I was anxious, troubled, overcome by an unexpected depression. To distract myself from the dark thoughts, I picked up a curious-looking stone. It possessed a fine, somewhat gravelly surface. I turned it over and over again in my hand and discovered it had a perfect spine for sliding my thumb along. For the first time on that curious afternoon I felt a measure of comfort. As I ran my thumb repeatedly along that coarse spine, the world changed. The enormous clouds hanging low on the horizon took on a pale-pink hue, and the entire sky appeared suffused with light. The cooing couples with their lock-jawed passion disentangled. Dogs, having sprayed their scent on stationary objects and unfortunate infants, paused to witness the end of the day. And well before I reached the summit I decided I had found a special rock - a luck stone.

High on the hill, I leaned on a rail overlooking the park and watched people as they swarmed across the ovals. And as my thumb ran along the rock I realised that sometimes it takes the smallest thing to see the bigger picture. That fragment of stone confirmed the validity of that old cliche: We all need a bit of distance from time to time. Distance from each other, distance from the world.*

Viewed in close proximity, people are repulsive. Even if we focus on the face (excluding the loathsome exterior of the body proper), what's so attractive? The thirsty pores, the black nasal hairs, the tired eyes, the wax build-up in the ears, blemishes, redness, swelling? The human face in all its natural glory is grotesque.

As I held my lucky stone and gazed down from the mountain, I realised something. Every step you take away from people makes them more attractive. If you've never tried this yourself, now maybe the time. Distance makes the heart grow fonder; even a few metres can help. Around 3 metres away, people are still a little offensive. Those unsettling physical characteristics are fairly clear. No, 3m is too close to get any real prospective. By 6m, people have started to lose a bit of definition. They've lost a certain harshness. They've lost that baked-on grit that our sun can produce. They're starting to soften. By 10m, they've gone all Doris Day, and at around 15, almost everyone is acceptable, even attractive. At 30m, everyone is beautiful or, at least, they exhibit the potential for beauty. Double this figure and something amazing happens. At 60m, the miracle of sameness occurs.

At this distance, physical differences like hair colour, facial features, colour of skin, shape of eyes, number of limbs, all are lost. Other potentially damaging features are gone as well: race, religion, personality, halitosis, obesity, anorexia, even gender, as we merge into the same sexless smudge. Once we have passed this important point, we never look dissimilar again. In fact the opposite is true. Given distance and a certain amount of density, we exhibit a unique homogeneity. Mixed together in this fashion we become a soft-grey mass - a blob of humanity.

I came down from the mountain and merged with the blob. As darkness descended, not only were we all the same but we were all moving in the same direction. We were all heading home. My mood lifted and I saw a multitude of wonder: love-struck couples hand-in-hand, satiated dogs, an angelic child whose radiant face could be seen once the food and flies were gone.

Is it naive to suggest the simplest solution to prejudice, xenophobia and hatred is just a little distance? It's something we should all do, but not at the same time, of course, as that would defeat the purpose.

Sometimes things are not what they seem. Take my lucky stone. It turned out to be a hunk of cement. A very comfortable hunk of cement.

* You might have noticed the exceeding difficulty in getting any "distance from the world". Even a plane trip skims the surface. Those who've managed to get a bit of distance from the world and have made the trip to the little stone in the sky have remarked that the Earth is too small for violent conflict, the moon isn't made of cheese and appearances are deceptive.