A cup of coffee isn’t just a porcelain mug filled with hot water, bitter to the taste. It’s not just a steaming vehicle for caffeine to find its perch in your sleeping mind. It’s not just a paper cup with a name misspelled.
It’s a book in the corner of the room, alone but surrounded in the company of like-minded people. It’s an awkward first date, where you grip it with both hands and look at it so intently you forget what you’re looking at. It’s an interview, where you’re so nervous you’ll take any excuse to keep your hands busy. It’s a rush to work where you forget to add sugar before filling your travel mug and rushing out into the day. It’s a barricade, a doorway, a distraction, a direct injection of energy-fueled passion. It’s a comfort, a friend, a memory, an experience. It’s a process.
There’s work involved in it. From the farmer in that place you’ve never heard of, it travels. People test it. They build on it. They roast it and flavour it. They package it and name it. They give it a brand. Everything needs a brand. You take it home and you grind it into soft, perfect morning dust and drain water over it. You sit for ten minutes in your car and pay $6.50 for it.
Do you even taste it some days? Or, do you just drink it, forgetting the purpose? Ignoring that feeling it gives you when you pay attention. Rushing through the day, forgetting that it’s there, or why you’re there, and what you’re doing. What are you doing?
Without the feeling, a cup of coffee is just a porcelain mug filled with hot water, bitter to the taste, meant to stave off a headache or push you through the day. It’s a habit.
Don’t forget what it’s for. Purpose is everything.