The Coffee

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word coffee? Here are a few responses that might come to mind:

Caffeine, for how tiring your life is and how it is easy to relate to the coffee I.V. joke.
Hot good quality roasted cup of black coffee, you can almost taste your best cup.
It’s good for you/It’s bad for you… each with supporting reasons.
Starbucks boycott to save the local brand.

All answers, true yet focused purely on coffee being the main constituent rather than an element of the thought. Besides, all very fundamentally influenced by the masses. For instance, tired or not, everybody can use more caffeine. Whether one cares or not, can certainly agree to boycott Starbucks. For me, a cup of coffee is only validated as an excuse to share valuable time with another soul. The caffeine has never accomplished keeping me up, whereas my taste buds are almost immune to quality; instant coffee is as good as one poured in one of those Nescafe advertisements. (I am sure many of you disagree, sorry, my five senses rarely operate to their full ability and I am still developing my sixth sense)

So coming back to the only valid excuse, I cannot start to explain how crucial a role coffee has played in getting to know some of the closest people in my life. Whether it was the Irish coffee I shared in the mountains of British Columbia or the sweet peppermint mocha in the basement of Irvings. I guess I am simply trying to urge you to try this just one out. Order a coffee not ‘To Go’ for a change. Sit down with a companion and sip it from one of the large coffee bowls over an extensive afternoon. It will bring you closer to another person more than you’d ever get in a hundred parties/movies/dates. Be sure to go there with no agenda and let the conversation unfold on its own. Share it with friends to bring some relaxation in each other’s fast paced life.

If we are in the same town, your next cup of coffee is on me. I’ll be glad to hear some of your experiences here if you have already enjoyed this subtle activity or are soon going to give it a shot in the near future.

With Love, Mo

Pull out that pad and pen… Write a letter…

With the advancement in technology, one of the (not so long ago) routine gestures has amazingly taken a higher level of significance. Aptly quoted by my dad, the world today is as small as we choose to make it. Cell phones, email, social websites such as Facebook, even professional websites such as LinkedIn allow for you to contact any friend of yours instantly or at the least expect a response within a few hours of leaving a message. Location and physical distance from you is no barrier. In fact, not just friends, but total strangers can be looked up in a matter of minutes and traced to their current location almost effortlessly.

In this day and age, writing a hand written letter is no longer the method of choice to communicate with someone. Unless it is a legal notice that requires a paper trail of certified mail, or someone lacking the technology skills needs to pay his/her bills, paper mail is nearly obsolete. However, such a decrease in its use has brought with it an opportunity to make someone feel special. Absolutely unexpected yet unusually unique, a hand written letter is considerably appreciated by most of us. The content itself isn’t even of much importance; simply a short paragraph or two will be read over and over again, as the lucky recipient just received non junk mail and have you to thank for it.

So, I urge you today to pull out that pad and pen and write up about your favorite color perhaps. Send it to a special friend and see it make his/her day. Do not forget to put down a return address now; it is my guarantee, your friend won’t sleep before responding to you. I have swayed a bit from my personal nature of the blog; however, I felt it was important to remind everyone about one of the little non-effort gestures that can go a long way.

To my friends and strangers interested in pen-pals, I will not put down my address on the blog. As mentioned before, it is readily available online within a few smart clicks for one who really wishes to write. For your effort to go through this entry, I urge you to leave your comments and feedback.

With Love, Mo.

The Couple Bubble

A few days back I commenced a Question Series on Gtalk (Gmail chat software). It was started to instigate discussion on various thoughts that cross many of us every now and then. Overall, it has received very interesting responses. I am glad that many of you have taken interest and have started looking forward to my questions.

As a form mainly of self-reflection and retrospection my first question of the series was, do couples live in a bubble and forget about their friends? 2008 has been a year of growth and fascination with the idea of love. Looking back, I realized many of my friends, myself included, have been under the influence of the couple bubble. I was intrigued to see that every friend of mine currently involved in a relationship took offense to this question and believed it was intended for them. Some food for thought I guess.

Whenever one enters a relationship, a feeling, a feeling stronger than one that can be described in words, blinds him/her. They are surrounded by a jolt of happiness and lose any capacity to reason logically, as they have their whole life. The stronger the relationship gets, the fainter the memory of past life. I can list innumerous positives that the entry of someone in your life brings with it. However, I’d like to discuss one of the absolute shortcomings of it today.

I call it the couple bubble because a relationship brings with it a layer of aloofness. People intertwine their life to such an extent that everything else becomes secondary. Usually nothing so wrong with it, however, when friends take a secondary spot one needs to be reminded of the big picture. Whether a relationship turns into a lifetime commitment or it is cut short due to irreconcilable differences, life is incomplete without friends and poignant when deserted by them.

The end of every relationship, whether for love or friendship, whether a loss or simply a disassociation brings with it a sense of sadness but more importantly a fear of loneliness. Instead of letting that fear guide your life, one needs to use his/her friends while at the same time regain their love, confidence and nurturing. It has to be looked at as a time not to be sorry for oneself, but to provide every happiness and joy to the friends who might have taken the backseat. It is a time to explore and move away from the only thought that surrounds us; the thought of a hollow space created in a very short time. Twenty 0dd years with a loving family, one to two with your counterpart; you be the judge about the non-existent/mistaken hollow space. Honestly, once through such an experience as many of us have already been through and many will certainly in the future, I feel you’ll never desert your friends.

I, for one, will always be there for you. Anytime, anywhere, I am simply a phone call away. If you are currently involved, I hope you do not take this personally. I have no fears of ever being forgotten by any of you. As aforementioned, this is pure hindsight. If you have taken interest in reading through this entry, one very close to my heart, your responses, rebuttals and comments are extremely welcome and desired. Please provide me with another point of view and I’ll gladly incorporate the same in my own thinking. <3