How strong do you like your coffee?

Dumb question but bear with me.

My practice is two plastic scoops of pre-ground “bold” flavors in the French press. I favor the Starbucks brand. One scoop isn’t flavorful enough, three verge on bitterness. I do not seep. Having poured the boiling water, I fill my sturdy cup into which, previously, I’ve sprinkled about half a teaspoon of real sugar. Then I whistle for Henry and hie to my work-couch where I eagerly plop.

This morning I chanced a third scoop of coffee to empty the canister. I could have left the scraggly grounds for tomorrow but they looked pathetic, and an emptied canister I could include in today’s dishwasher load so its glass would gleam. Weeks of fingers had made the canister not dirty exactly, but murky. Something in human nature yearns for glass to gleam.

To my surprise, the three-scoop coffee wasn’t bitter. Did it taste better? That depends, I answered my question by not answering it. Depends on what, my inquiry persisted. Hence this missive. Who knows where an idea may hide. Seek and ye shall find.

Choice is a fraught and human activity. No other creature, best we know, debates alternatives, at least for long. Practicality dictates their decision. Dog-pal Henry is, compared to his accompanist, single-minded. If he pauses, it’s because two possibilities entice equally. I’ve as many minds as our shelves have dishes, arranged for various occasions. Just now my missive mind is captaining the boat.

The complexity of choice is suggested by paragraphs three and four, above. Why two scoops, bold, French press, Starbucks, a fractional teaspoon of real sugar? Why this cup and not another? Why yearn for glass to gleam? We may not rate these choices, just “what we do,” but each selection was an election – and exercise of our freedom – and each may be inspected. Is my preference for Starbucks, for example, gustatory or instilled by ingenious marketers who’ve made that name synonymous with the beverage? Why bold flavoring (but not too bold)? A single question radiates as many mysteries as a candle does beams, stabbing into the dark. We do not know why we do what we do, we only think we do. We insist we’re the person defined by our facts but that’s nonsense. Change your facts and you change your personality. Confidence in one’s identity is ignorance.

These conclusions are inarguable yet most of us resist them out of dread. Who would I be if not the person I’ve come to know? We tie our identity to our details like a boat to a dock so we can board it tomorrow. I – that is, the guy I call I – am the sum of innumerable choices, most of which I don’t recall having made. To be proud of where I’ve arrived is to ignore how I got here. Outcomes are accidents, fate a retrospective fairytale superimposed on events. Chance rules.

So we should be humble, right? – meek and grateful before the unknowable Almighty, if things have gone our way. So you’d think. But no, we strut, many of us, as if we were autochthonous know-it-alls, flaunting our attainments. The smartest species in terms of calculating is the stupidest about its mortality. What other beast boasts of being best!

The good news about our stupidity is it gives us plenty to work on if we care to. I wise up a little each day just by thinking. I will never be wise – the notion’s laughable – but wiser feels good, like I’m “getting somewhere.”

Tomorrow I will sip my coffee with enhanced respect.