“Hello, may I help you?”
“Yes, let me get a medium coffee. Regular with two sugars”, I said enthusiastically.
“There’s no medium sir, we have Tall, Grandè and Venti.”
Quite majestic names for a few ounces of liquid but who was I to argue and after looking at the various sized cups trying to decipher which one in fact, was medium, I say, “Umm, okay, in that case let me get a Grandè coffee. Regular with two sugars.”
“What flavor would you like sir?”
“Flavor! A coffee, I just want a coffee!” I thought to myself yet as the words were about to slip off my tongue in frustration, I uttered, “What flavors do you have?”
“They’re listed on the board behind me.”
I could see she was to be no help at all so I perused the never ending list of everything from exotic Kenyan roasts to Brazil’s latest import that arrived just last Tuesday. Much like being in a museum and not wanting to appear apprenticed, I held a couple of fingers to my chin and pondered inquisitively as though to incite admiration from my fellow coffee drinkers.
“Wow, this guy really knows his coffee, look at how long he’s taking to choose” must definitely be the thoughts flying around the room as I stared blankly at this meaningless list in front of me.
With decided assurance, I finally give out a ’Ah, I’ve got it now’ sigh and tell the nice girl that I would like a Costa Rican blend, grande with a little bit of milk and two sugars. Surely, the confetti would come down and I would be awarded the customer of the day right then and there. As she rings up my order to what is presumably a bill that I will have to add to my student loan debt, she proceeds to tell me that I can add my own milk and sugar at the condiments table behind me.
So let me get this straight: Not only is this the most expensive cup of coffee I’ve ever confusingly ordered, I still have to finish preparing it myself? Okay, I walked into this establishment willingly, so I was prepared to play by their rules. Far be it from me to complain about what I did not understand. Maybe this was the Picasso of coffees and I was just a novice in the world of cubism. Bring on the square heads and distorted torsos.
I took my coffee. I added milk to my coffee.(5 types of milk to choose from) A couple of sugars.(5 types of sugars to choose from) Stirred not shaken. Drank my coffee. Enjoyed my coffee.
Choices are good, I’m not about to say how much better it was back in the days of supposed simplicity. Life is never quite as simple as we think it might be but the lessons seem to be the same no matter how much we rename things, add choices and mix up the cards. A slot machine in Vegas has a few combinations that yield a big prize. Three cherries in a row, the lights go off and hundreds of coins fall into your lap. I sometimes get the feeling that we’ve turned everyday life into the same odds hoping that we strike that lucky combination in everything we find only instead of coins, you get a perfect coffee, car or even friends. I’m not quite sure that’s the way it works but I am sure that we’re giving too much power to the choices before us.
If that coffee is not enjoyed as part of a conversation with a good friend, who cares where it’s from? Frankly I’d rather share a cup of tea with someone from Costa Rica than to drink their perfect blend of roasted beans alone. And of what value is the a/c and sound system in a new car when it’s so much more fun to roll down the windows and sing at the top of your lungs with someone you love?
As I stood there in front of that immense ordering board, blankly, looking for a way out, I realized that this was going to be a special cup of coffee after all. I learned how adding complexity to simple things is easy but drawing the simple lessons from life isn’t always on the big board of choices.
“Hello and welcome to your life, what can I get you today?”
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