How the Ritual of Coffee Brewing Allows Us to Slow Things Down

At this very moment, most of us have a list of things to do that feels like it stretches to the moon. There is always a task to accomplish, a goal to achieve, a responsibility to meet. And if we fail to check that task off the list as soon as possible, we feel like failures. As a result, we speed up our lives, jumping from one thing to the next, our anxiety building with every new item on the “to do” list.

We never slow down, possibly because we feel we haven’t earned that right with so much still on the list. And then we get more stressed and anxious, the tasks feel more daunting, we quicken up the pace even more, and we get more anxious. The cycle just keeps repeating and repeating. We need things in our lives that force us to slow down and take a breath. It’s simply unsustainable to constantly being jumping from one thing to the next. For us, that thing is often our ritual of making coffee.

Brewing that morning coffee forces us to slow down and focus on the calming experience of just pouring water onto coffee grounds.  We ignore the rest of the world, the emails we need to respond to, the errands that we need to run, and just pour the water. When the water is all poured, we just sit back and wait. It’s not a long process; brewing a couple cups of coffee with our Chemex takes about six or seven minutes. But it forces us to slow down and breath.

We live in a world of convenience. The things we buy are to make our lives easier and allow us to tackle even more. It’s ironic how these tools of convenience make us more frazzled. We fail to realize that things that take a bit of time can often cause us to slow down, as well. And that’s not always a bad thing. When it comes to making coffee, we’d argue its quite the positive! Yes, an automatic coffee maker is a great tool of convenience. It allows you to do other things while your coffee brews. But maybe we need things that force us to live in the moment of what we are experiencing, rather than allowing us to multitask and add yet another thing to the list.

Coffee is made to be enjoyed, and the ritual of brewing the perfect cup is an enjoyable experience that allows us to slow down.  Let’s take the time to grab a cup of coffee and a book, make ourselves comfortable on a cozy couch and just be in the moment and enjoy our lives.