Obviously coffee is delicious, nutritious and, depending on the coffee shop you visit, a pretty cheap date. But that venti Caramel Macchiato just might be doing more for you than you know.
Americans buy 400,000,000 cups of coffee per day. Individual businesses sell approximately 200-300 cups of espresso and brewed coffee every morning, and with the average latte costing $3.45, that means that we spend around $1,380,000,000 on coffee every single day.
That’s unreal.
Coffee is a powerful force in our world––specifically in the United States––and it seems to drive just about everything. If you see someone who’s sluggish and cranky, you accredit it to a lack of caffeine in their system; if you know it’s going to be a long day, you instinctively reach for a travel mug. If coffee beans stopped growing… it sounds a lot like the world might stop turning.
It’s an understatement to say that it’s getting "pretty big."
Now, there are quite a few directions that we could take this discussion. If you’re an economist or an entrepreneur, I’d say keep an eye out and hop on-board: that stuff is going somewhere.
If you were a physician, I might suggest that you do some research into the health effects. Not only is coffee a booming industry, but it also accounts for a reasonable amount of our diet: Is all that caffeine and sugar a bad thing?
But today, I want to view it in a different sense: Our society is changing, and we need to keep up.
There was a time in the world when the iPhone 6s didn’t exist. Can you remember it? Can you imagine it? It’s getting harder and harder for me to––every facet of life, today, has become so consumed by technology that a world running without Samsung, Apple and Motorola seems near impossible.
Unrealistic.
“How did we do anything without cell phones?” I’ve heard people say.
It's odd to think back to a time when we didn't carry those things everywhere. Personally, my friends and I got cell phones in middle school, and ever since then, everything's changed.
For those of you who remember those days when sitting down and reading a book, or going over to a friend’s house and kicking a soccer ball around was cool, you know that we’ve lost that. We’re always doing something––we’re so busy nowadays––but it hardly ever excludes technology, and it’s hardly ever with people.
And that’s the crippling effect of technology.
Even when we’re with people, we’re on our phones. My iPhone sits comfortably in my peripheral vision whenever I’m having dinner with some friends or family, and I respond to it as obediently as a dog might at the sound of a ball bouncing on hardwood.
There’s something more going on here, too. It isn’t hard to see that we, as humans, desire to be approved of by others. That’s exactly what “social” media targets: our desire to be seen, to be known, and to be loved. So we end up substituting social media for social interaction; we choose Netflix over people––“Likes” and “Retweets” over deep relationships.
We prioritize our digital identities and lose ourselves in the process.
We want people to see our worth and to recognize our significance. That’s why our profile pictures capture those moments which we’re most proud of; that’s why we only post pictures that make us seem interesting, and even untag ourselves from pictures that make us seem uninteresting.
But, as I’m sure you’ve felt before, this isn’t as fulfilling as it seems to promise. It makes us feel good, but that feeling is fleeting. Even for those out there who are “Instafamous”––it’s never enough. We’re still lonely, and we’re still desperately searching.
Whether you’re an atheist or a theist––if you believe in a higher power or not––it’s easy to see that we’re all made to be social creatures, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that technology doesn’t satisfy that.
Our culture has grown more and more impersonal as technology has grown to dominate our world, but it doesn’t have to remain that way.
It comes down to this:
We consume thousands and thousands of cups of coffee, but I bet you more than half of those are consumed alone. We brew it in the morning, and rush to work/class; we go to a drive-thru and we grab a cup, but we place our order with some lady through some screen; we barely interact with anyone at all, anymore. Not if we don’t have to.
So, how might coffee change the world?
Coffee dates are among the few remaining social interactions which we value highly. Because, while face-to-face interaction seems old-school, it’s still cool. And it’s only getting cooler.
It’s a lighthearted invitation to extend, and, although it exercises social muscles of ours that we’ve neglected for far too long, it has preserved the virtue of conversation, and it continually reminds us how special one-on-one interaction can be.
It has nothing to do with technology. All it does is bring people together, and creates a context for relationships to flourish.
So get out there!
Embrace this trend, and get out of the house!
- Have a co-worker over for dinner and brew a pot of coffee to drink after your eat.
- Invite a classmate to check out that new coffee shop next week.
- Set aside a weekend to go camping with friends and make some coffee to drink around the fire.
- Take that cute girl on a coffee date.
- Do anything.
Coffee brings people together, and people are the very reason we’re alive.
Expand your social circle––even you introverts out there! Dust off your french press, go buy those local beans you've heard so much about, invite some people over and remember how good it feels to be a human alongside other humans.
