UNDER AGE DRINKING
My personal “Thanks!” to Elaina and Rae, university students visiting us this week. They're reesponsible for today’s blog title and thought. They’re also coffee drinkers!!
At breakfast I asked when they began drinking coffee. Rae was 12 and Elaina 10. My parents taught me that coffee was an adult beverage and that as a child, I wasn’t old enough. However, I’ve strayed from their standards. My children, as young as 8, have all been served creamy sugary coffee. Elaina called it "under age drinking."
We agreed that our parent’s apparent enjoyment along with the attractive aroma of brewing coffee drew us at first. We also agreed that taste was not initially a drawing card. (Actually, not one of us liked the taste.) We discovered that we did, however, like what drinking coffee represented more than we disliked its taste.
We drank it because we thought it would make us more grown up. Being like those we admire, gaining the acceptance of those we love, inclusion in the circles to which we aspire motivate us to reach beyond our comfort zones.
Lots of habits are begun in this way. Peer pressure or peer acceptance drive most teens to try their first beer, forfeit their purity, break rules, ignore caution. The negative consequences seem worth the potential gain. Love and acceptance are prizes of supreme value, but are they always worth the consequences?
If coffee were toxic like the venom of a snake, I’d never take another sip. So I ask myself, "Is there anything I’m "drinking" that is poison? Any relationships I’m pursuing irrespective of consequences? Any habits I enjoy, any course of action I follow, or any evils I tolerate which are distasteful, harmful, or toxic to my life?"
When it comes to coffee, I think we’re all safe in acquiring a taste for it, but not all life’s options are so innocuous. No all of them deliver what they promise. Coffee didn’t make me an adult. It didn’t cause my parents to love me more. A Budweiser doesn’t make skinny teen boys into muscular good looking atheletes or give developing, pimpled teen girls perfect skin or figures. What I take into my life has consequences.
The hard facts are that negative consequences are averted by caution. Responsible actions lead to positive rewards. Loving acceptance of others delivers in kind. Who I am-- not what I wear, who I know, where I live, or what I drink-- makes me accepted or loved.
Ponder these thoughts throughout your week and as you drink deeply, also drink well.
All material copyrighted by Stephen Meeks
--Gourmet Thoughts for A Gourmet Day ** Fresh Brewed Here Every Monday-- Millions of us begin our day with coffee. For some its a necessity; for others a simple luxury. Which ever your case, I want to share it with you occasionally--not to intrude, but, hopefully to enhance by offering a thought, an idea, an insight, or a story. After all, what better way to begin a gourmet day than with a gourmet thought and hot coffee?
