Why personal growth?
As I sit in this coffee shop I just overheard a lady order a vanilla latte with no water, no whip, 7 pumps, soy, and could you please not make it too hot…I look up at the board and see the multitudes of options to customizing your coffee. The complexity of her order made me contemplate that rarely do you get the simple black coffee order. What a metaphor for life and what we, as humans, have become. We have lost the art of the slow-roasted life. This is why personal growth is so important.
There is an understanding, I am told, amongst coffee critics and dare I say snobs that the key to a good cup of coffee is you must roast your own coffee beans. If you don’t start with the properly slow-roasted bean then the coffee you receive will not turn out. Thus we find people adding cream, a shot of this flavor, a sweetener here to make it something we can drink. I understand that we all have different tastes but my understanding is most people when they taste a good cup of coffee that was brewed from a great roasted coffee bean there is a depth of flavor that doesn’t need additives to make it drinkable.
Life is a lot like this idea of coffee. The secret to life is to start with the right foundation, being slow-roasted. Otherwise we find ourselves spending time adding ingredients to spice up the drink we are offering to the world. If we take the time and the work to “perfectly roast” our inner life then we will find we don’t need to add anything to make the drink something that people will know is great.
As I talk to people and spend time listening and observing I have found that far too many of us spend way too much time on the ingredients added to make our drink that we are offering to the world something they will like to taste. I would argue if we spent the same amount of time working on the inner roasting of our lives we would find that the depth of “taste” of the original will leave people speechless and craving more.
It is a lot easier to just order any old cup of coffee and just add enough things to it to make it something you can drink so you can get your caffeine hit. However, if we can be honest for a moment there is nothing like sitting down and taking a full sip of that perfectly brewed cup of coffee made from the slow-roasted bean you did yourself. It is something you want to linger over and contemplate life over. It is something you want to share with your friends and tell the world about.
In the same way there is nothing like sitting down across the table with someone who’s inner life has been slow-roasted and it is time you just want to sip slowly, linger with and converse about the myriad life issues, and you want to share with all those you meet. The hard work of “roasting” your inner life is not the most exciting part but I can tell you it is worth more than you will ever know when you offer yourself to others without the unnecessary additives.
Personal Growth versus Additives.
So what about your life? Are you a good cup of coffee or have you built in so many additives to cover up the fact that you have no depth? Personal growth is all about building depth in your inner personal life.
If you continue to cover up your weaknesses with sugar and flavorings, you may fool people from a distance but if anyone gets close you will be found out that you are just a bunch of additives. Unfortunately, that’s why most of us don’t let people get close to us and so we live a lonely existence because we have to many additives and no depth.
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