The Case for Starbucks

What’s so terrible about being pumped up with adrenalin and full of caffeine? Well, I can think of two or three things right off the top of my head . . . adrenal exhaustion and the much put-upon lining of the human stomach, to begin with. Coffee is a hot bitter herb, pretty yang as yang foods go. And what it ‘gives’ us imbibers is a rush of hot energy, a certain snappiness to our tongues, the illusion we are smart and fast and productive. Sort of the opposite of sleepy couch-potato-ness, putzing around not doing much, meandering through a morning, afternoon, and in worst/best case, evening.

But yin is kinda really important, too. Yin is that calm, thinking-things-through-at-our-own-pace energy. The slowed down, subtly-colored, quiet energy humming in the background of our bodies, running things we don’t want to pay attention too [digestion, heart beat, secretions being produced etc.]. It’s the quiet classroom, for once no one talking, kids with bent heads doing an assignment. Or the person in the back of the restaurant, sitting alone, quietly reading through lunch. You get the picture. The unheralded underpinnings of life, and so on.

But, yin is also a rainy day, dark, a bit foggy, a kind of I don’t really want to go to the office [NO! WAH! DON’T MAKE ME LEAVE THE HOUSE!!!!] energy, sometimes.

Like today. Fog. Everything dripping. Ice, snow, drippy, slushy GREY and WHITE with some brown thrown in to increase the depresso factor.

Suddenly that cup of coffee I never finished this morning and left in the microwave is calling to me.

I took a shower to ‘wake up.’ You know how HARD it is to get in a shower on a wet drippy day? And get wet without even getting to the car? I have not stepped one foot outside, and I had to get wet. And I didn’t like it. Because even though I put on nice dry soft clothes, I am going to have to go out to the car and it’s going to be more of the same.

And I am definitely going to finish my nice hot coffee first and probably stop at Border’s which has the best coffee on my errand route. Unless you count the deli with Green Mountain coffee . . . or Perennial Chef, or, well, even STARBUCKS.

There are worse things.