We take drinking as a very ordinary thing. However, what is happening is quite complex and based on a mass of learning.

Our hand grabs the cup. This is quite a sophisticated action requiring us to:

• judge distance and pressure
• work out a specific placement on the cup so as not to knock it over, or miss all together.

We lift the cup at the speed, learned over a life time, that doesn’t swill the liquid out of the cup but is fast enough to satisfy our desire. Without looking we touch the cup to our lips. Then we judge the level of tilt required to deliver a reasonable amount of fluid, without sloshing a deluge up our noses. We brace ourselves for it to be too hot and we take evasive action if it is. We respond if someone knocks us mid-swill and we adjust position to deal with this.

Judgement as sophisticated as this takes a lifetime to develop.

Taking a drink of tea (or anything else) requires extensive experimentation and learning though our lives. Without realising it, we develop the skill to analyse, measure and adjust in a rather refined and unconscious way. All this in order to be able to drink a cup of tea effectively.

Is it possible, therefore, that actually we aren’t all experts on what to do during a more complex situation, like a pandemic, for instance?

Is it conceivable that people with the responsibility of making the best decisions on a situation far more crucial than drinking tea, are quite possibly doing a good job? Even if it may not look like it? Maybe what is happening is complex and so we will have no idea what the “right” choices are until the whole thing has blown over? At that point, and only at that point, we will be able to analyse the outcome? Could it be that currently we really have no idea?

Could it? I rather suspect it could.