A few things influenced my decision to enter the coffeehouse. For one thing, in a lapse of judgment I brought only a thin hoodie as protection against the biting wind and cold that only the middle of the winter can provide. This place also happened to be one of my haunts and I’d not stopped by in a little while. I knew Janis was working today; she always works Saturday mornings. It wasn’t normal for me to get this gut instinct about anything, but today I knew I was going to do something important.
I stopped right outside the door, looking in through a window at the Bean. The crowd was mostly college students, stopping by to escape the cold or visit friends. The warmth of the place, both the atmosphere and the temperature, reached me from the cracks around the door. I knew immediately where I planned to sit.
The snow, which had accumulating on me while I’d been standing still, melted as soon as I opened the door. A little bell jingled to announce my arrival to anyone bothering to listen. Janis was the only one who looked up. She seemed more tired than when I’d seen her last.
“How long has it been?” I asked her. “A month?”
“Something like that, Aaron,” she said. “What can I get you? Maybe something on the board would interest you today?”
Everything there, except for the surprisingly scary drawing of a velociraptor, looked too fancy.
“Just my regular, please.”
“On the house,” she said before I could get out my wallet. “I think the best thing about you is that whenever you come in here, you haven’t changed a bit.” She turned her head toward me while she mechanically poured the regular coffee into a medium cup. “You’re always so serious but relaxed. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Practice.” I patted her on the shoulder. “So you’re wanting me to give a speech?”
“Not just for a class this time, either,” she said. “I want to hear you talk to people. I want to see them listen, too.”
“I’ll try my best. No promises.”
“Wasn’t expecting any. Go get ‘em, champ.”
I took my coffee about ten steps away, to a table next to the window where a girl about my age wearing a gray fleece jacket was typing away at her laptop.
“May I sit here?” I asked, placing a smile on my face in the event she bothered to look up.
“Go ahead,” she said without even looking. Maybe she’d seen me when I entered, but I doubted it.
I sat silently for a few moments, brooding with the coffee while I thought about how to proceed. Ad-libbing didn’t sound too bad. All the controversial topics only made people angry. I wanted them to think and maybe even change. It might just take some inspiration. I took a slow sip before beginning.
“In a normal speech,” I said to nobody in particular, “I might be careful to take notice of each and every one of you listening, but that’s not possible because right now it’s just me. Right now, only I am even bothering to listen to the sound of my voice. Rather, I’m the only one who can hear it.”
I put one leg over the other, turned so that I wasn’t facing the window anymore, and proceeded.
“If I were almost anyone else, I wouldn’t blame any of you for being too busy to hear this. Unfortunately, I’m me and it’s your own faults that prevent you from hearing. You force yourselves into being busy all the time, studying or working or just ignoring the pleas of the world around you to stop and listen. You say you’ve got a lot on your plate, and surely you do. But instead of eating it bite by bite and steadily making space, you push your food around like a little kid with their vegetables.
“It’s not about making the time, though, because any of you could do that if you really wanted. It’s that you don’t want to do it. You all have desires, I’m sure of that. You all have things you want to have, and you say that your lives would be better if only they were yours. But you don’t pursue these things, since you know the greatest happiness comes when you’re trying to get what you want. You don’t know what you’ll want after that, so you don’t plan on taking the risk and having to spend more of your ‘invaluable’ time getting something new.
“You’re right, for once, but it’s entirely misguided how you got there. The truth is that those things you think you want aren’t worth it. They’re never worth it. I’ve seen people waste their lives away for things they never really wanted in the first place, trying to find that happiness. What they don’t realize is that they can open their eyes and ears and find it everywhere.
“This happiness that eludes you sits across from you at a table, or across your dorm’s hall, or maybe in a forest just outside of town. Wherever it may be, it’s not hiding from you. No, no. You’re the one hiding. You’re the one too afraid that you’ll have no clue how to proceed with that happiness once it’s in your grasp. For all I know, you could be right.
“But really, what’s the biggest risk? You can go outside, look around, and spend some time just being fine with being alive, having what you do have, and seeing everything. This world of ours is all we have, and it’s all we might ever have. But it’s also got everything that will ever matter to us. And it’s just sitting there, waiting to be appreciated by the people who’ve populated it and made it their own.
“Now, if you’ve decided to listen, and you want to do something, I can show you how to see these beauties that sit in front of you each and every day. You need to turn off anything connecting you remotely to anyone else: it ruins the effect and magnitude to have someone else trying to get your attention. Once you’ve got that done, just go outside, or somewhere you just feel at ease. Stand there for a little while—only you know how long (but stay longer than you think is enough, because you’re probably wrong about that)—and then shut your eyes, trying to picture it all in your head.
“Then you open your eyes again, see what’s different, and try again. Remember this place or this person, hear its sounds, smell its smells, and maybe even speak to it a little bit. It’s listening. It hears you even if you don’t think it does. And it’s that much better for knowing someone like you got up and did something different, something good. You’ve suddenly found the most efficient layout for the objects on your plate, so that this is an essential part of the plate itself, and now you can start eating that food. Now you can start making the changes to let yourself be happy, be free. And if I’m right, then maybe tell this to someone else. Earth can’t possibly be overappreciated.”
I hadn’t looked at anyone else, opting to stare into space or at the snow falling outside. Thankfully, it hadn’t ceased. I finished the rest of my coffee and got up.
“Thanks for letting me sit here,” I said to the college girl with the laptop.
“Mm,” she said and nodded her head slightly.
“Good job,” Janis said to me when I walked up to the counter again.
“Did people listen?” I asked.
“I think a few did. I did for sure.”
“Good to know I’m changing someone, at least.”
“Damn right you are. Have a nice day, Aaron. Stop by more!”
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Janis,” I said.
“Oh, it is, isn’t it?” she asked. She frowned. “Do you have anyone to celebrate with?”
“I don’t think I need anyone; celebrating comes easily enough for me. But if you want, we could get dinner somewhere later. Maybe I can show you what I was talking about.”
She blushed.
“That sounds good,” she said. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”
“I’ll pick you up,” I said. “We can walk in the snow to wherever it is we’re going to go.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. Be safe.”
“I will. Talk to you later, Janis.”
I tossed the empty cup into the trash can on my way out. Hands in my pockets, I went back the way I came. Maybe I'd stop at my apartment. I didn't know; it didn't matter. One person changed, who knows how many to go.
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