I start my first job working as a barista at a coffee shop. I love the lightning-fast pace of the morning rush, the magical dance while working the bar with someone else, the long slew of orders tag-teamed with proficiency and speed, and the number of people I get to talk to every day. And it is here at this bustling neighbourhood coffee shop that I first realize a specific kind of heartbreaking rejection whenever I ask customers, \u201cHow are you?\u201d and they respond with an automated, unreflective, one-word \u201cFinethankyouhowareyou.\u201d<\/p>\n
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At first, my little sixteen-year-old heart takes it personally when people don\u2019t engage: Do they not want to talk to me? Do they not realize how seriously I mean it\u2014that me asking isn\u2019t just a formality, that I truly want to know? Or is it that they\u2019re so closed off that they don\u2019t even know how they\u2019re doing? Do they not know that I am inviting them into a moment of human connection, even here (especially here) at this coffee shop chain in the centre of suburbia?<\/p>\n
There is definitely the argument here that it\u2019s simply not that deep; first of all, no one owes anyone any access or insight into their lives at any moment, and it is completely acceptable to not engage when someone tries to strike up a conversation. Also, there isn\u2019t actually very much time at all in how long it takes to make a cappuccino to necessarily share even an anecdote about anyone\u2019s day, let alone give a remotely meaningful (or, gasp, vulnerable!) answer. Sometimes the time someone has waiting for their coffee is the only four minutes they have to themselves that day, and they don\u2019t want to spend that time unpacking their inner feelings to a teenage barista. I get it. AND YET.<\/p>\n
To take the world overwhelmingly seriously is what makes me Not Fun at Parties, and it is also the role of the poet: to marvel at a blade of grass, to become fascinated with moments of monotony like waiting in line and where our minds wander while folding laundry, to take a magnifying glass to the simplest things and find their significance.<\/p>\n
One time, I shared a poem online that I\u2019d written called \u201cAll This Love and Loving,\u201d which talks about what I\u2019ve learned from each relationship I\u2019ve had\u2014one of those lessons being to see \u201cthe water glass brought to my side of the bed as a radical act of tenderness.\u201d A \u201ctroll\u201d of sorts commented on the post, \u201cWhat\u2019s tender about a fucking glass of water?! You don\u2019t even know how language works, do you? You can\u2019t just make shit up.\u201d I thought this comment was incredibly amusing, because poets literally make stuff up all the time. The art form itself is free of rules, defiant of them, in fact. Also, to ask a poet \u201cwhat\u2019s so tender\u201d about anything is basically a dare.<\/p>\n
In response, I put it out to my online community to retaliate this person\u2019s inquiry by writing poems about tender glasses of water, and over sixty people sent me poems, and even more stories and snippets of their lives: glasses of water brought gingerly to broody teens who keep saying they\u2019re fine. Straws held to the lips of sick loved ones in their final days. The way someone\u2019s husband brought her a glisteningly cold glass of water right after she gave birth to their daughter. Someone working in a restaurant who saw an ex come in with his new wife and brought them both waters after she saw that no one else had done so yet. My Uncle Mike, in his coffee shop\u2013owning days, writing a poem about a kid who never bought anything and seemed to need so much, who would ask for a glass of water but never two. It was our collective defiance against someone saying get over it, it\u2019s not that deep.<\/p>\n
To be a poet (or, more broadly, a creative, or even more broadly, any person who cares to walk gently and inquisitively on this earth) is to insist that everything should, in fact, be examined with tender-hearted scrutiny, including: What does it mean to greet each other? Why do we ask \u201cHow are you?\u201d if we don\u2019t mean it? What would change about our daily interactions if we did? What if we were able to offer a tiny bit of a real answer when someone asked us? What if we used that interaction as an invitation to open up to each other, even to strangers, even for a brief moment?<\/p>\n
Think about the practice and ritual of it: Here we are, acknowledging each other\u2019s existence. Here we are, hopefully for a moment looking each other in the eye. Here we are, first order of business, asking about how we find ourselves today. Here we are, missing it over and over again\u2014the opportunity to share a small insight of our humanness with each other.<\/p>\n
Here we are in this neighbourhood coffee shop in the bleary morning, paths otherwise not crossing, with all sorts of realities and difficulties\u2014me, a teenage barista with deep existential angst about what I\u2019m going to do with my whole life, with a head full of songs and poems that maybe at this stage are really not that great and surviving the super, truly heinous what-a-drag that is high school, nursing my first impossibly broken heart after Hot Steve said he didn\u2019t want to write me letters from architecture school in San Diego anymore while he was home over Christmas break. That stuff cuts deep.<\/p>\n
And yet here I am, persevering\u2014here I am brewing coffee and steaming milk despite all my personal melodramas that feel so serious, so that you, perhaps driving your kid to Saturday-morning volleyball practice on what would otherwise be the only day you could sleep in all week, can caffeinate on your way, can hold your venti sugar-free vanilla extra-hot non-fat latte close to your body while you nod a silent hello to the other parents in the stands, whom you may or may not ask how their days are going, may or may not ask generally or specifically how\u2019s it going\u2014\u201cit\u201d being anything at all in their lives, \u201cit\u201d being their internal or external world\u2014to which they may or may not answer about schedules or busyness or Kendall\u2019s math homework or the teacher\u2013parent meetings next week or their stale marriage or their in-laws coming to visit or the bewilderment that this is what life has become: lattes and carpools and volleyball games and baristas with too many thoughts in their heads.<\/p>\n
Yes, you standing here in front of me at the counter beside the case of croissants and banana bread, our worlds colliding in this small moment, I am greeting you: Hello, welcome to your day. Hello, welcome to this space. How are you? How are you? How are you?<\/p>\n
Maybe part of the problem is that how are you? is such a vast and broad question. Are we meant to give a general synopsis of our overall well-being, all things considered, on a scale of one to ten? Our overall physical state or our mental state? How do we differentiate between the autopilot don\u2019t-actually-have-capacity-to-find-out how are you? and the do-you-want-to-share-something-about-your-life-with-me how are you?<\/p>\n
If the rebuttal is that asking \u201cHow are you?\u201d is just a formality, that truly there isn\u2019t time for all that, then maybe we should trade it out for a more accurate question, something more palatable, approachable, a softer starting point. Maybe we could ask what we actually want to know, like \u201cWhat did you get up to this week?\u201d instead of \u201cHow was your week?\u201d<\/p>\n
We could ask about each other\u2019s weekend plans if we want to know about weekend plans, and as an added bonus, we\u2019ll find out something about the other person\u2019s interests, which may or may not overlap with our own interests, which would lead to camaraderie over something we both like or the opportunity to learn about something new. And maybe when greeting each other, if there isn\u2019t time for any of that, we don\u2019t need to ask any question at all; we can welcome each other genuinely and leave it at that.<\/p>\n