Throughout my life coffee has been one of my few constants, pillars, and cornerstones amidst an incessant evolution. I take pride in having such a popular comrade and cannot see it as simply a beverage. My coffee symposium easily accounts for a hefty sixty percent of my life’s journey.
“I take pride in having such a popular comrade”.
My cup of cofee is my resiliant confidant. It’s my meditation partner and coach. It’s a conscience telling me to take a breath and recap. It’s a reboot of my alter ego. It’s my desert without all the calories. It is that friend with not many words, but always around. As long as you know how to befriend this fella’, it will serve you for a lifetime of memories and experiences.
The Personal View
On a personal level, coffee is my companion. At nine, I discovered the automatic coffee machine at my uncle’s Tiro (trap shooting). My cousin and I sneaked off to make coffee with a deposit of one coin of 25 Lira, then topped it off with heaps of sugar, pretending to sip it like adults and make small talk.
Fast forward a few decades, having my first child with no support system, I turned to quick coffee breaks in search of moments of sanity, when the baby was not crying, feeding, burping, or pooping!
With my family, coffee is my medium. It links me to some of the richest moments, whether bonding or settling arguments. I usually drove my kids’ bickering into the kitchen while sipping on a coffee. The distance to reach the kitchen minimized the intensity of the brawl, and the aroma of the Turkish brew kept me flowing with ideas until the conflict was settled – “hopefully”!
In other situations involving adults and “in-laws”, coffee breaks were polite sessions of getting messages across smoothly, and sharing what could possibly be shared!
Meeting up for coffee
Last, but not least, coffee with friends, and colleagues, and meetings with work affiliates were pivotal in pushing dialogues forward. It’s my connection to the world.
That simple “let’s meet up for coffee’’ eased the mood and flow of ideas, and added soul to the table. Catch-up sessions with friends and tete-a-tete gossip added to my life’s journey. Broken communication amongst peers turned into flowing discussions. Work topics evolved into brainstorming sessions and future plans despite the many bumps ahead. Meeting influential people and executives above my pay grade was instrumental in shaping my thinking and work vision.
In a nutshell, coffee has character. It is an influencer. It is bold and humble at once, strong and faint, sophisticated and yet modest, a procrastinator and stimulant. Its elements are a natural catalyst of sensory pleasures – all five of them!
If worldwide coffee consumption is continuously on the rise, then there has got to be a whole lot of good coming out of it. Around the globe, we drink more than 1.4 billion cups of coffee per day. So, how is your cup of coffee influencing you?
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – T.S. Eliot