Does Anyone Else Feel Guilty?
Every morning, usually just after 5 AM, you can find me in my kitchen, carefully measuring out 22 grams of coffee, ground in my Encore Baratza grinder the night before (so as not to wake the kids in the early morning), and placing it into my Hario V60 drip brewer.
I have a kettle with a thermostat on the top that I watch carefully to achieve just over 190 degrees before pouring it gently, creating a magnificent bloom in the coffee grounds.
With all that’s going on in the world around me, my mind wanders through the recorded events of history to times when people had far less than what I have now.
Maybe our future will find us less affluent, less privileged, and more grateful for things like meat and bread, but today, despite the global pandemic, I am still a privileged person pouring coffee that has been picked by a hard-working laborer thousands of miles away from me, carefully dried, shipped, then roasted in a roasting plant probably somewhere in the Seattle area.
(Yes, I usually support local roasteries, but I am currently consuming Starbucks beans. Judge away.)
Regardless of the level of snobbery at which you (or I) operate at, I have found myself taking that cup of coffee less and less for granted.
I find myself pausing for a long moment before drinking the first sip and letting an increasingly strong wave of profound gratefulness wash over me — for all those who worked to bring that cup of coffee to my cup, my mouth, my tastebuds, this morning.
I think through the path those beans traveled.
The work it takes to grow them, with all the different diseases and ailments that can hinder a coffee crop from reaching fruition.
The hot, backbreaking labor of twisting each coffee cherry from the tree.
Drying them. Packaging them. Shipping them.
Roasting them.
And I feel a bit guilty that I am safe here in my kitchen, way out in the country, secluded and isolated…
Drinking a cup of carefully brewed coffee.
The least I can do is write a little piece about how grateful I am for all those who do what they do every day to bring that cup to me.
Thank you, all.
