Coffee. The lifeblood of a nation. The lifeblood of the whole world? It does afterall… speak every language on the planet… in every city… in every country… across the globe. It is as much at home in the trattoria’s of Rome… as it is in the backstreets of Rio… or the casbahs of Morocco… or the cafes of Uzbekistan.
It knows no country.
It has no borders.
It favours no race, creed or colour.
It breeds no contempt…
and it needs no introduction.
It’s delicious wafting aroma can easily pull a crowd from 50 paces! Even those who don’t actually drink the stuff… love the allure of it’s aroma… evoking as it does a sense of the exotic. Far flung places like Africa… Brazil… and the Indian sub continent… the warm countries of the world where the culture is as steeped in mystery… as the air is “fragrant” with the scent of exotic spice.
It occurs to me that coffee has a strange kind of unifying effect on the world. It’s the one thing that we all pretty much have in common. The fact that more than half the world’s population could be indulging in a cup of coffee at any given time… on any given day… seems to me to have strange significance. Then a crazy notion hit me… “could the world’s problems be hashed out over a simple cup of coffee?”
Truth be known… the ritual of coffee drinking has little if anything to do with the actual drinking of COFFEE. It’s just something we do. Having a coffee gives us the excuse we need to sit down and ponder with friends and foe alike… the world and it’s doings. It’s all about communication. Coffee shops, cafes and casbahs across the globe bubble over each and every day with the voices of people sorting stuff out… sharing their problems… catching up on the gossip… hashing out deals… and (hopefully) finding solutions.
What a miracle then if it could be that simple. Imagine for just one moment… the Sunni and the Shia sitting in the dirt of a Baghdad street corner having coffee with the American. Or the Russian and the Chechen hashing things out over a coffee at the back fence. Or the Palestinian and the Israeli settling the dust of a thousand years over the one thing we probably all have in common…a coffee… the international beverage of our times! *wink*
I know it may sound trite… and I am by no means seriously suggesting that something so simple could provide a solution to the problems of “difference” between the peoples of the world!
But don’t you think… if the issues of human conflict were viewed LESS from our differences… and MORE from those human aspects we have in common… the world would be a much kinder, safer and more peaceful place.
“Sit with me awhile… hear my story… and tell me yours… in time I will understand your point of view… see the world as you do… and soon we will be friends”
So “chin chin” everyone… as we do our bit to bring about peace… one cup at a time!
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Addendum: I wrote this before the National Sorry Day… and would just like to add that having listened to (and heard) the Apology and the Reply… (and the subsequent lop-sided fallout in the press)… it appears to me that we Australians still have a very long way to go yet… to reconcile the past and move forward into the future.
What’s missing is tolerance and understanding… on both sides. Perhaps some sitting in the dirt over a coffee is called for! *wink* And the words I penned just the-day-before-yesterday never resounded so loudly!
So… for what it’s worth… here they are again…
“Sit with me awhile… hear my story… and tell me yours… in time I will understand your point of view… see the world as you do… and soon we will be friends”
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