Tea-Like Diffusion

I’m not really a big fan of metaphors. To me, they seem to sort of dance around what they are actually trying to say. It is ironic, because I write with metaphors all the time. In fact, I want you to imagine a glass of tea.

The tea is golden brown, maybe it has some honey in it--no, MAPLE SYRUP. Since you’re kind of a hipster and care about the environment you’ve opted for a metal infuser that’s filled with loose leaf tea, instead of traditional tea bags. You’re not super dedicated to the tea infuser, but your mom gave it to you and it’s in the shape of a swan so you’ve decided to give it a try.

Rereading my metaphor, I feel like it got away from me.

But let’s pretend that the tea is a metaphor for Green Dot (GD). The glass with water—pre-tea—represents our community. The loose-leaf tea represents the people involved with GD, the infuser is obviously bystander intervention and Green Dot.

Eventually, after a few minutes all of the water in the glass turns a golden brown. GD works in a similar way. It starts with a few people who are dedicated to making our community safer and it ends with, well not a bunch of murky water, but a safer community.

In order for the tea to taste good, it needs enough tea leaves in the infuser. See where I’m going with this? For GD to be successful, if you ask me, it needs people from the community involved. Not just one or two people, but a group, otherwise things won’t really change. I mean, could you make tea with just two leaves? Maybe, but it’d be like drinking hot water, and if you like drinking hot water then you miss my point. The point is, GD depends on diffusion—spreading active bystander values from person to person—to make the community safer.

I’m not sure how to gracefully end this metaphor, but let’s have a tea party, shall we? Oh, and let’s join Green Dot too.

Until next time,