In: Idle Thoughts, Well-Being

Pay Attention to Your Coffee

How many details do we miss?

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A cup of coffee seen from above on a pale pink background, James Horton
Photo by Jakub Dziubak — free for use via Unsplash license

If you buy a good cup of coffee and pour milk into it slowly the milk will sit just below the surface. You will barely be able to tell that it is there, except for a few milky wisps reaching upwards.

Blow across the top to cool it down, however, and the ripples on the surface will churn up the milk below. It will bloom into gentle clouds and rise upwards, expanding until it suffuses the whole cup.

There’s not really a lesson here. But, over the last few months, I have started paying keen attention to the world around me and there is a lot of beauty in such small details. Of course ripples go through the whole cup. How busy must I have been, to miss that?

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James Horton, Ph.D

Social scientist, world traveler, freelancer. Alaskan, twice. Writes about psychology, well-being, science, tech, and climate change. Ghostwriter on the side.