Which came first was it the coffee or...?
You can fill in the ellipses with almost anything.
Let's look at the following picture:
How many friends do you see at the table? If you counted the coffee cups among them, you got it right. Coffee, for me, is, above all, an extraordinary companion.
I have had the most profound conversations with my cup of coffee... 😁 And, even if I laugh, I'm not kidding.
I will tell you a little story that will perhaps help you understand the particular situation of coffee in my life, and why I am so sure that it is not a vice... Although it looks so much like one.
About 20 years ago I was a chain smoker. And, of course, I loved (and still miss) the long afternoons of coffee and smoke while reading a book or watching a movie. A cigarette and a cup of coffee also accompanied me in my long hours of study. When I decided to quit smoking (one of the wisest decisions I have ever made in my life), I did so because, apart from physical health reasons, I realized that I had come to associate almost all the important things in my life with the activity of smoking, and over time many of the important things in my life had become excuses to smoke. When all the alarm bells went off I simply stopped smoking. In my gut I knew it was what I had to do.
One of the things I love to do is read. Coffee usually accompanies my reading but I know I never read so I can drink coffee. For me that is a difference and makes me trust coffee as a good friend and not a toxic relationship.
Caffeine is one of the most consumed psychoactive substances on the planet and we consume it through coffee, tea, cocoa and mate, among more than four thousand other plant sources that produce it. Some of these alkaloids have a well-deserved bad reputation, such as cocaine and nicotine, but others have a very good and well-earned reputation, such as quinine and morphine.
Let's just say that coffee has all the potential to become a vice. But it must be said: my experience and some of the scientific literature warns me that coffee and anything else can become a vice for an addiction-prone brain. So it's okay to keep a watchful eye and tempt from time to time if our coffee consumption is being as mindful as it should be.
That said coffee is a beverage that also has extremely healthy properties used throughout history also as substances to treat certain imbalances among them the stomach ones.
For now, coffee continues to be for me an excellent companion, someone with whom to share pleasantly the hours of solitude, reading a good book, or watching a movie. It also keeps me awake with its pleasant company during my long working days.
But above all I know that the coffee will be there to be shared and it will be an excuse to laugh with my friends, to talk about important or unimportant topics, it doesn't matter. Around it we will share our table and our after-dinner conversations, amidst laughter.
As long as my brain continues to treat him as a good friend, without worrying in excess, I know he will be there to keep me company.
Now look at this picture and tell me, how many friends do you see at this table?
The photo belongs to millycf1976 and was edited using Canva.
That's a very interesting point you make about the connections we tie coffee to. I know some people who need to smoke with a coffee or else it doesn't feel complete for them. As you say, others need to socialize. Personally, like you, I prefer to take my coffee with a bit of reading :)
Wow, you really are inseparable from the coffee, it's obvious that you have a great time together, both alone and with a group of friends.
And how beautiful are your pictures!