Thoughts on Slowing Down

• January 16, 2012
• 1 note

Almost every day I make myself a cup or two of coffee. I don’t own a Keurig, mainly because I think they’re incredibly wasteful and produce a horrible cup of coffee, which is due mostly to the fact that they sell mostly horrible, stale coffee, but also because I cannot control water temperature or immersion time. I don’t use a drip maker because again, I can’t control the temperature or immersion time. So I use one of four manual brew methods; Chemex, AeroPress, French Press or Pour Over. The knock I usually take on this from people is that “it just takes too long” or “I could have gone to starbucks by now.”

Okay, here’s the deal… getting out what you put in goes a lot farther than just working out. I put the extra time into making myself a cup of coffee because it’s worth it to me. The quality of my coffee is 10x that you would get just about anywhere else save one or two coffee shops here in Toledo. Plus, I believe slowing down a little to get something super high quality is more than worth it. Plus, I believe slowing down to appreciate things, even something as small as a cup of coffee, is completely underrated and a practice woefully underutilized.

But this is the point… I don’t criticize or judge people by their choice not to do these things (other than judging you by the terrible coffee you drink.) Go as fast as you want, I don’t much care. I also don’t criticize people who speed, even though it wastes gas and is illegal. What bugs me is when people give me crap for taking my time and appreciating.

I slow down because it’s the 10% of my day I won’t be hustling my $%& off doing whatever I can to be the best husband, father, employee, provider, family member, creative, and everything else under the sun. If I can start each day with about an hour of time to just slow down, relax, and prepare for the day, then I think that it’s a beautiful thing, for me.

Listen, if you don’t get how I can take 10 minutes to brew a single cup of the best coffee available, why I choose to take the time to make loose leaf tea over a bag of lipton, or how I can get up every day at 6am, stretch for 20 minutes, then have 15 minutes of quiet/reading time, then we simply have a fundamental disagreement on how life should be lived. I won’t criticize you, and I’d appreciate the same. Don’t call me crazy… just call it a different choice or way to live. I may have my opinion on which is better, but you’ll never hear me call someone out on it. If you don’t have something nice to say, keep your mouth shut =).

PS - The sheer fact that I have to defend myself on this says a lot about the speed in which we as a society are going… sheesh.