Meditation

I wonder if the secret of life can't be learned in a coffeehouse.

It's the worst possible place to voluntarily spend one's time to read or to leap oneself into cyberspace, but everyone does it. Sound softly crushes from all angles of existence. Concentration, remember, works best in silent spaces. Meekly, gently, clothed in silence, is the middle-aged man, brown-haired and cursed with oversized glasses, absolutely detached from the midday madness that clutters around him, lancing a book with his right hand, title as conspicuous as oxygen. And he turns a page, adapts his gaze, and the stream streams on.

The talkers are the ones who are anathema. Coffee is a fuel for bitchiness, and it's all flustered politics, tenacious gossip, empty giggles and intellectualized everything. They come to mark their territory, consume an aura, and move on, while the silent ones have their feet planted, upholding a universe of decency, honesty, authenticity. Continually slapped by those who emanate noise, like saints they obliviously linger their dance with meaning.

They have learned the heart of happiness. That contentment doesn't lie with something outside, but a morphing of oneself to the demands of the outer world. If you can learn to tolerate noise, you can learn to tolerate death, and life is planted in valleys slowly worn with the waters of decay.

I wonder if the secret to life can't be learned in a coffeehouse.