Any experience over time can become habitual, and the habitual by necessity loses its uniqueness, its excitement. In an era in which we strive en masse to celebrate the individual experience (witness the mass personalization of everything, from your very own uniquely assembled Timbuk2 tote bag to the literally myriad options available for creating your own custom-from-the-factory Harley-Davidson motorcycle), a company that delivers what we ask of it walks a fine line. No sooner have we been given what we want than we begin to recognize that it was the same thing as it was last time, or we notice with a diminished sense of uniqueness that it’s identical to somebody else’s experience. The very comfort and easy availability of an individualized experience causes it to lose its value (one of the reasons that perfect industrial diamonds and farmed pearls are orders of magnitude less expensive than the flawed items direct from nature). We begin to define ourselves by how we, as individuals, differ from each other in our achievement of being unique. Unfortunately, this comparison requires that we first have something in common.
Take, for instance, my seeking of local coffee shops and local restaurants. I drink Starbucks coffee regularly, and with pleasure. But when possible, or rather when convenient, I attempt to find something that perhaps fewer people will have found before me. With no vistas left to conquer on this earth besides the depths of the ocean, it’s pretty unlikely I’ll ever be the first person to see anything grand on a universal scale, and so I content my explorer urges with a search for whatever uniqueness I can find that is achievable within the context of my mostly urban life (the height of laziness, that I’m unwilling to personally pick my beans from the top of a mountain in Guatemala or Indonesia!).
Everyone who drinks coffee shares some aspect of the experience. I can say that I honestly love the stuff. I have a definite preference for medium-to-dark roasted, earthy, rich beans, though I couldn’t tell you what companies’ blends I like best, nor even what coffee-producing regions of the world I prefer. This probably describes most people who head for Starbucks on a regular basis but claim to prefer something local. Isn’t it grand, though, in a small way, to be able to say to a coffee-drinking friend that “I found this great little coffee shop while I was in San Diego,” knowing he has not been there, and thus can’t judge my appreciation of what is probably an ordinary cup of coffee, and instead must accept at face value the uniqueness of my experience; alternatively, to complain to another, “There are no good coffee shops in Washington, D.C.,” and receive an appropriately sympathetic response based on our shared appreciation of the minimum standard experience, Starbucks? And how true is it, really, this sweeping generalization? There must be some good coffee shop in D.C., surely. What if my friend says, in reply, “Yes there are! You need to go to X” (I’d offer an example, but I actually have yet to find a decent place in D.C. — even the Starbucks stores there seem sub par). The horror! I’m left, then to concede that my experience is not yet complete, and in the effort to one-up those around me in the generic appreciation of generic coffee, I am less unique than I might otherwise suppose.
And so, it seems that Starbucks, while creating a thriving market for gourmet coffees produced quickly and conveniently (a necessity for any American food commodity), has stepped into a trap of human behavior from which it might not emerge. By taking advantage of our innate desire to be different from each other and special to ourselves, the coffee giant has touched a nerve.
In moments of clarity, I make a choice between what will elevate, and what will not; what is an important differentiator of the individual, and what is not. Judgmental comparison of myself to others profits me nothing but a momentary sense of victory or defeat. Instead, to be conscious of how, why, and when I experience what I do, and become unconcerned with how my experience compares to others, but simply to value the experience for its own sake — here, perhaps, is the path to enlightenment through coffee. In short, consume for necessity, but not for any other purpose.
Did I just cross a line into asceticism? Momentarily, perhaps. Thankfully, “necessity” can be broadly defined, and I can still buy truly good coffee, and be satisfied.