Coffee is Disgusting

CBN.com - I have a confession to make: Coffee is disgusting.

I am sipping my three dollar eight cent Starbucks fancy caramel Macchiato. The name sounds grandiose doesn't it? Although I don't know what it means, it sounded the best among the four black lists hanging in that coffee shop. This coffee must be deluxe. After all, I had to use my debit card to pay for it, which I am thankful doesn't reveal one's bank account. The two dollars cash I had on me was not enough to buy me my morning energy. I also had to drive an extra couple of minutes down the street, stand in a long line of sleepy people awaiting the mercy of caffeine to turn them on for the day, and arrive to work a half an hour late.

This great combination of factors must make this morning coffee the best!

Yet halfway into that prestigious cup I noticed that I was kind of forcing myself to like it. And all of a sudden I remembered I'd never had coffee without a sandwich or a cookie. I was almost ten years old, and very skinny, when my mom started adding a little bit of instant coffee into that pale drink called milk, to disguise its taste so I might like it. She always gave me coffee along with a sandwich of jelly and butter. During the course of 27 years I did the same, except I substituted the sweet sandwich with a cookie from time to time.

Excuse me my memories.

Yes, coffee is disgusting, and I never loved it either. It was the jelly, the butter, or even the milk I always thought I hated that covered for it. And once isolated for what it was, it stood only bitter and black.

I was so sad to discover that my long mornings' faithful, warm, and beautiful brown companion was more of a habit than a thing I needed and loved. I was so disappointed when I clearly saw that fear of failing to make the day without it made me believe that black-hearted thing was good for me.

It was all about coffee -- but how I wish it all stopped there. In fact, I realized as I looked into my steaming cup, dozens of things I held close to my heart -- too scared to let go of -- stand now just black, bitter and distasteful like coffee, only buttered up and disguised with some kind of jelly.

I am wondering, is it the habit or the fear that is causing the change in me? Why did I never notice that after a sugary swallow these things always left a bitter trace in me? The instantaneous joy, and the draft of energy it falsely brought, once gone, only brought showers of despair and loneliness in me.

How did I never notice that some people are just like coffee? It takes a lot of sugar and creamer to sweeten and whiten their presence, and all they leave in you is bitter memories and heartburn.

I think we need to re-explore the real joy (the joy coming from a worldly product) in that coffee, to find nothing but an unhealthy, costly habit. It's not about cropping or trashing my cup of coffee, it's about how we sometimes, for many years, become blinded by what is nothing more than a mere fantasy?

The rest of my confession is: injected joy only colors reality around us, but when joy springs from within it carries along the capacity of changing reality.

Am I quitting coffee? I think it's now way beyond just a cup of coffee.