The Restorative Power Of A Daily Coffee Break

I’ll have a large skinny vanilla latte, please.

I barely make eye contact with the barista. I continue checking emails on my phone. I take a casual, virtual scroll through Instagram as I wait for the coffee to be done. I mutter thank you. I head out into the cold, not paying attention to anyone else in the shop.

I’ll have a large black coffee, please.

I stand, waiting for the barista to put the coffee in my hands. And then I hear him say, “Sit down, please. You drink it here.” I remember that we’re not in New York anymore — we’re in Japan, and nobody drinks their coffee on the go. They sit and they sip.

They sit and they sip.

And they sip.

We live in a world that puts hustle on a pedestal so high that we have forgotten how stand still amongst the chaos.

We jam pack our schedules to the brim, so much so that we cannot have a cup of coffee with our spouse — or heck, even alone — at the kitchen table in silence. We have our cup of coffee while driving, while walking, while sitting on trains or waiting in carpool lines.

And while we’re rushing to the next new thing, while we’re obsessing about our hustle, little moments of joy are slipping us by.

While we’re groaning about Monday and counting down the days till Friday, there’s a whole week that goes by that we’ve just wished away — and that’s time that you cannot ever get back.

It’s easy to get swept up the chaos of the hustle and the daily grind of it all — I’m quite guilty of that as well. But maybe, just maybe, if we took five minutes to sit and have a cup of coffee, we’d wait for the weekend far less and finding gratitude in the each day a bit more.

I don’t know where to start when it comes to slowing down. The hustle has become so ingrained in our lives that it seems like it’s part of our genetic make up. Perhaps it starts with a simple promise.

Tell yourself to stop for five minutes and savor that cup of coffee, for those five minutes could change the course of your whole day, and even your week.