In math, science, poetry, religion, mythology, philosophy, and in other realms, seven is a magical number. I am seven away from reaching my 100 Coffee with John.
My goal is to reach the 100 milestones before my upcoming birthday in June. Will you be a part of the magical seven to reach that milestone?
The only rule, we can’t have already met for the project. Sorry. No repeats for the project.
If you want to be part of Coffee with John, let me know. We can do virtual or if you are in Charlotte, NC face-to-face. I would be honored to meet up and count you in this special, magical number.
My Coffee with John (CWJ) mate for this round I met recently via an old post of a David Whyte poem that I had shared on a Facebook North Carolina Singles Group I had briefly joined and left, circa April 2020.
Somehow, as she was searching for David Whyte, she found the old post, leading her to recently contact me through my Coffee with John Facebook page. After a few exchanges, she kindly accepted my invitation to meet up as part of CWJ.
We talked about what led to our meeting and, among other things, discussed in passing David Whyte’s Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
In this book – a read I recommend you emerge yourself in -, Whyte takes everyday words and beautifully gives them a rebirth, expanding on their etymology and significance.
In the spirit of that book and the nature of this round of CWJ, here is my reflection/takeaway from this last coffee encounter with the word stranger as the anchor:
A Stranger
Who/what is a stranger?
A random act of generosity offered to you at a time of crisis with no reciprocity required by a person who happens to notice you at that moment when you are feeling alone with the void of familiar faces around
A person exchanging a smile with you as they pass you, never to see them again
A passerby generously stopping to give you kind and helpful words as you seek their guidance to help you find your destination
A begrudged individual throwing insults your way because somehow your looks or way of being has offended their sensitivities.
A friend/lover/old neighbor no longer part of your life…
I have met a lot of strangers as part of CWJ. Some have moved into the friendship category – until they become strangers again shall our season of friendship end.
Smiles, acts of kindness, helpful words, and ephemeral moments to cherish have all been exchanged during my coffee encounters, a journey I cherish and continue to cultivate and nurture.
So much can happen in an hour – meet the love of your life, take a wrong turn in life, have an encounter that will alter the rest of your life..the possibilities are endless.
What’s in those magical 60 minutes and 3,600 seconds
How do you choose to spend an hour of your day?
Exercise? Mediate? Read a book/poetry/an essay? Write your own poetry/essay/book? Or squander it away doing this or that?
So many choices, with no rights or wrongs.
An hour is exactly how long CWJ #92 lasted.
In that hour of this last meeting, I learned part a story and journey of a talented, smart woman finding her way in the world with the ups and downs that life brings. I am always incredibly grateful for the generosity strangers give, letting me drop into their lives for a moment in time.
I recently came into the idea of living in a poem, a concept brought forth by American poet Naomi Shihab Nyei. She explains it as not a permanent state but one, “when you think, when you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re savoring an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another — that’s a poem. That’s what a poem does.” She goes on to talk about holding and savoring that space.
To me, that one hour (or hours) people generously give to me when they decide to take part and join me in this CWJ journey, represents that notion of living in a poem. That space of conversations, shared moments of reflections, thoughts and words exchanged, are a sacred, magical poem to hold, punctuate and cherish.
I can’t say that I have been wronged to the point where my trust has been shattered. At the same time, I am not sure how you can measure such a thing.
A few events come to mind where I can say that my trust and faith in people have been tested. But, honestly, I probably have been guilty of being on the side of the culprit. How many times we do things without truly taking into account the effect of those actions on others? Or how many other times we feel like we have no option but to do something that you know will end-up hurting others?
Some situations are clear where the betrayal and hurt cut deep, sending people over the edge to the point of depression, despair, and being blinded by rage and a desire for vengeance or retaliation.
Maybe the depth of betrayal doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is the ability to forgive the trespassers of your trust.
That ability and the rays of hope and light that accompany the power to move forward and truly forgive I found in my coffee mate for this edition. Her story is that of hers to tell. What I will say is that it took, according to her own accord, time and healing to reach that point where she could sit on that understanding, moving to a place of peace, love, and grace.
Finding that power can set us free. Is it easy? Probably, not.
Now, I believe that I don’t hold grudges, but – if ever the time comes when I am truly tested – I hope I have the power to be beckoned by forgiveness and live and breathe on that space.
Unfortunately, 89. My coffee mate was hoping to be #88 for this edition of CWJ – a number in numerology symbolizing fortune and good luck.
Her fortune as of late had taken a turn, going from independence to dependence, richness to hard economic times. Nonetheless, she was hopeful and talked of her resilience with lots of personal and professional projects under the works.
One of her projects, inspired by her grandmother, that we discussed includes collecting stories in the form of a set of four core questions from women that intrigue her. The ultimate goal for my coffee mate is to self-publish the collection with the intent of preserving the stories of those women for future generations.
She asked me to be a part of her project by answering the questions on behalf of my wife to give voice to Lari’s story. While I can’t say or know what Lari would have answered if she was still in this world, here I am taking the liberty of sharing an excerpt from one of my responses:
Can you recount an event, or time, when your perspective shifted significantly? How?
As a kid, because of health reasons and this perceived notion that I was a shy child, I was sheltered and overprotected by my family to the point where it was detrimental to my self-confidence and self-esteem. As a result, I had to overcome insecurities and false beliefs about myself and my capabilities. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I was able to free myself from that past and those limiting beliefs but a big contributing factor to reaching that shift had to do with forgiveness. I had to let go of resentment and be kind to myself as well as towards my family…
Not, 88. But, fittingly, 89 – a number that symbolizes building and creating a long-term positive effect on the society. I don’t know if my coffee mate will ever publish her project (we met through Bumble Bizz and, aside from our conversation and a few follow-up emails, we have not touched base again – as it happens in general). All I know is that in sharing and connecting with others through her effort, she is building and having a positive effect, creating a space to share stories and, in a way, preserving the stories of different women.
By popular demand (okay, like only three or four folks), I am creating a Youtube Channel that I am linking to my Coffee with John project. Here enjoy the premiere with this impromptu video that I made today
I so appreciated this meetup. I had the opportunity to cry, get to know an awesome person, and, eventually, express myself here with these words.
Approximately six-months had passed since I had last stepped inside the YMCA before CWJ #84. I had kept postponing going for months after my yearly membership had lapsed.
Not sure what prompted me to go but it was a spontaneous decision on a lazy, Sunday afternoon. As I was renewing my membership, a woman behind me was scanning her card to get her workout. Took me a few minutes to recognize her behind the mask.
She is someone that worked at the Y before being furlough because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She worked closely with Lari (my wife) when Lari worked at the Y membership services. This person had been someone that I knew peripherally, always friendly and warm to each other but never quite close, in comparison to other people from the Y circle.
She, along with a whole army of other folks at the Y, did a lot for Lari, playing a key role in doing just a lot for my family during and after my wife’s battle with cancer.
I can’t remember the last time I had seen her. “I saw you in the Ballantyne Magazine. I never read it but I took the magazine on a recent trip and there I saw you and read about your project,” was one of the first things she mentioned as we met on that fortuitous Sunday afternoon.
A week or a few weeks later, on a windy, cold morning, we were sitting across each other sharing a cup of coffee. The conversation flowed with me getting to know about her, husband, son, and her experiences.
Unexpectedly, as we were wrapping up, we both ended up crying. At that moment, she shared with me her perspective and experience during Lari’s Life Celebration Event, held at the Y with about 150+ people in attendance. In addition to sharing memories and stories, the event culminated with a Zumba dance to honor my wife’s passion for dancing and her Zumba instructing days. My coffee mate shared with me how difficult it was for her to join in the dance. For her, the dancing seemed out of place. She was overcome with sadness and felt overwhelmed by the experience, opting to sit down and grief in her own way, which she was completely entitled to do without any reservations.
My takeaway, we all grieve and process loss differently. Culture, religion, personal beliefs all influence the process. There is no right or wrong way. Cry, dance, wallow, seek therapy, do what it takes to mourn, grief.
I have to be mindful of that because I tend to harden -up, not allowing for room to wallow in sorrow when confronted with loss. With Lari’s passing, I have become more sensitive, honoring both my emotions and that of others. Still, my threshold for identifying and carrying that loss into different aspects of my life in a negative way is low.
The cornerstone and drive behind this project is the antithesis of letting sorrow drown you down. I don’t want to reminisce or talk about the past or how unfair life is/was. I want to celebrate, dance, and soak life’s experiences while honoring the light that Lari brought into this world. I carry her in my heart and will always love her.
But I am going on a tangent, not the direction I had intended for this takeaway. The beauty is that that’s part of the process we call healing.
My other takeaway: trust the universe to bring you together with the people that you are mean to meet, not when you want/desire but when the universe feels appropriate.
Photo not from CWJ#84, but taken on that day – so, it seems appropriate.
Had a lovely conversation learning about a journey of a talented, smart, driven woman confronted by a series of personal and health challenges along her life. She has confronted cancer, a divorce, interpersonal relationships, among other trials and tribulations. Her life journey has led her to finding a path of purpose to help others as a life coaching while balancing a full-time and demanding job.
Did she mean to share any of those aspects of her life with me? Maybe. I don’t know. This was only the second time (third time if we count a brief interaction we had outside a YMCA months back, just at the start of the pandemic) we had ever met and, somehow, the flood opened and she begun sharing with me different aspects of her life journey.
It doesn’t always happen nor do I expect that to be the norm but I am grateful and honored when people give me the trust to be a recipient of their story.
The Takeaway: Sometimes in life we need to talk and be listened to when we least expect it. Take a break from the hamster wheel and connect with a friend, a stranger, a new acquaintance and see where the conversation takes you. Perhaps you will do the honor of listening or, to your surprise, the river of your life will come out demanding to be shared, engaging and gifting the other person with a new found knowledge and understanding of yourself.
As I have opened this project to meet people outside of my network, the question of motivation and intention keeps coming up for me.
What are the intentions and motivations of the people I meet? Are my own intentions and motivations clear to the people I meet?
Those are questions that have become even more pronounced as I meet people through Bumble Bizz, and as a result of Coffee with John profile on the Ballantyne Magazine .
Bumble Bizz is full of consultants, real estate agents, financial advisors, “influencers,” and folks looking to sell, acquire investors, or build their careers somehow, not to mention the men and women looking for something beyond a business connection. The intentions and/or motivations of the strangers reaching out to me directly because of the article are not as obvious.
Perhaps they, like me, just want to make a connection. I don’t know. By nature, I am skeptical, and — as a person who grew up in NYC — my guard is up most of the time. So I know I am asking a lot with the premise of this project. Yet, even for myself, I can’t help my nature and go back to the questions of intentions and motivations.
I can’t say I have had anyone tried to sell, convince, or rope me into anything. Nor have I had any negative experiences with people trying to cross any boundaries. What I have experienced is a desire to share with me a particular narrative to influence what I might end up writing as my takeaway. That might be driven by the human desire to share, influence, or perhaps a public misgiving/misconception of what Coffee with John is all about.
I never know what I will end up writing. Nor do I know what will influence my takeaway. It might be the conversation or it could be the vibe of the meeting. Coffee with John #81 reaffirmed for me my intentions and motivations.
My intention is connecting, sharing a moment, and, if it leads to, cultivating friendships and welcoming new people into my social circle. The motivation comes from a place of healing, grieving and dealing with the cards life has given me.
From the start, people have asked me if I mix dating with this project. The short answer is no. That has been clear for me from the start, wanting to keep those set of boundaries and worlds separate.
This does not mean I haven’t had Coffee with John meet-ups with people I have or are currently dating. But, those connections came independently of this project. Ultimately, I want CWJ to be a safe space for me and the people I meet.
The takeaway for Coffee with John #81 is that I will continue to trust my intuition as I meet new people without worrying about their motives or intentions. In the end, I trust.
Building on my momentum, Coffee with John # 71 represented my third time meeting with a complete stranger. This time I met them through a private neighborhood FB group.
I had posted about my CWJ project and asked if anyone wanted to meet up. Two brave souls who were willing to participate reached out. The first, I met virtually. The second brave soul I met face-to-face at a local cafe with us being the only patrons sitting down.
We shared a lovely conversation about life and part of our history. It was an uplifting discussion, leaving me light and energized.
In discussing the experience the next day with a friend, the question that came up was what prompts or drives strangers to meet up with me. I am not offering to buy, sell, date, or anything. And, in most cases, people buy their own coffee. All I am offering is the chance to meet and have a conversation.
With that question in mind, I reached out to coffee mate #71 and asked her what had motivated her to meet me.
Her answer inspired my takeaway: we need to challenge ourselves and explore life out of the bubble we surround ourselves with.
What have you done today that challenges and takes you out of your comfort zone? It can be as simple as talking to a stranger.
PS: I don’t have a picture from the meeting but I do have this picture from that day.
Coffee With John 