Coffee
When you have everything, you have no right to ask for more.
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'It is a foolish depression that persists on a full stomach, an unnecessary despair that strikes the well loved, a greedy dejection that visits the young and healthy, a masochistic melancholy that plagues the privileged; and yet these emotional maladies are rife. The human needs redesigning, Oh Celestial Creator, won't you make happiness less brittle?'
-Geoffrey Frederick Pemberton, Third Earl of Westmead (1859-1939), Australia.
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There were two men sitting in the kitchen with coffee. One of the men, the older of the two, had a face of thick stubble and a tired flickering frown. He looked older than he was. The other man was younger, fresher, and more alert. Both were fidgeting constantly: moving things about on the table, scratching their heads, or picking at a torn part of the tablecloth. It was a controlled, contained, frenzy. It was the coffee; they were on their fourth brew.
'Do you see what I'm getting at?' asked the older man, clutching his stubbled chin for a moment to throw a worried glance at his friend.
'Well, I suppose so.' said the younger man, after a pause, 'do you mean...' he sighed and waved his hand in the air, unable to find the words.
'What I mean is that we shouldn't complain at all' offered the older man, earnestly leaning forward, his elbow on the table, 'I mean just consider our position in society, we're at the top of the pile. And not just society, the whole world.'
'But we're not aristocrats or... or millionaires' said the younger one blowing into his mug to cool his coffee.
'Yes yes, I know, but looking at the entire spectrum', came the sharp response, 'from the abjectly poor, I mean from people who are starving to death, to the dishonourably rich, we're not far off the rich. Consider our quality of life: we've got everything we need and anything we could reasonably want'.
The younger man gave a doubtful grunt and loudly slurped his coffee. A silence followed in which they stared into each other's mugs, apparently unwilling to look at one another. Then they both winced under some burden, unknowingly in unison, and the younger man cleared his throat to speak.
'Anything we could reasonably want?' he squared his shoulders, 'what is it unreasonable to want? What you find reasonable may not be the same for everyone else.'
'Ok, Ok.' said the stubbled man, slowly putting both his hands face down on the table with an air of admission, 'but maybe you, at least, can agree with me on what it is reasonable to want?'
'Right, maybe I can.' said the younger man, raising his eyebrows with the faintest smile threatening to appear.
'Banging on about that again are we?' interrupted a woman's voice from the hallway, accompanied by passing footsteps.
'I'm not banging on' shouted the older man as she walked upstairs, 'we're debating, we're...' He scowled at the skirting board and then bit his lip and turned back to his friend 'Sorry, what was I saying.... so, right, um...' he leant forward over his coffee, clutching the mug on both sides, eyes darting about the room, as though he might find a visible trace of his lost train of thought hiding somewhere in the kitchen. The younger man sat fidgeting attentively.
'Hmmm' sighed the old debater, 'we were about to agree, at least I hope we were, on what it is reasonable to want'
The younger man nodded fervently, looking past his friend, out of the window.
'So?' asked the older man.
'So.' repeated his friend, redundantly.
'What is it reasonable to want?' blurted the old man, looking straight at his friend.
Eye to eye for a moment they both seemed startled. Then, turning away, the younger man said 'Well, is it unreasonable to want luxury?'
'I suppose we'll have to define luxury before we can answer that question.' said the older man, scratching his stubble with an air of relished fastidiousness. Then with eyes narrowed on nothing he took hold of his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger and began tugging it unconsciously, displaying his yellowing lower teeth. The room filled with caffeinated contemplation. Their restlessness made quiet sounds.
The younger man gave a glum sigh and gazed into his coffee. 'Coffee' he said, tonelessly.
'You want another cup? I'll put the kettle on' said the older man distantly and automatically, without moving to do so.
'No, I mean coffee' he held up his mug, 'Is coffee a luxury?'
The old man blinked, slouching into his seat to examine his coffee at close quarters. 'I admit I would find it difficult to go without coffee now, after so many years of such regular consumption. But... it’s what I was saying earlier about our position at the top of the pile. We've had the unnecessary luxury of coffee, at our finger tips, all our lives.'
'So it is a luxury, you think?' asked the younger man.
'Yes, yes I think so. Don't you?' said his friend.
'Yeah, I suppose it is.'
For a while they cast their eyes about the room in slow cautious leaps. Both men looked vaguely upset. Then, with apparent effort, the older man began to speak again
'But we can't go through every possible candidate for luxury and decide which ones are and which ones aren't. That would take forever. We need to move from the individual to the universal. My original point about unreasonable want was... was... that an existential angst coming from someone who is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well loved is senseless. It’s preposterous.... When you have everything, you have no right to ask for more.' The old man glanced at his friend with an expression of despair.
'But what more does the existentially anxious person ask for?' queried the young man quietly, confused at his mentor's despair.
'Meaning' said the older man confidently, 'grand purpose, ultimate understanding, immutable significance: whatever you want to call it, the meaning of life.'
'And you think that's too much to ask?' said the younger man.
With a look of disbelief the older man turned to his greenhorn friend and said in a low whisper 'Of course it’s too much to ask, it’s a chimera. No conceivable, articulable "meaning of life" can possibly be satisfactory. Language and thought, our modes of communicating with ourselves and others, are damned never to grasp eternal truths, never to truly deliver.'
The young man nodded frantically, pouting his lips and frowning, to acknowledge that it was, of course, too much to ask. Of course. But something in his manner belied this acknowledgement, a sparkle of the unconvinced shone in his eyes. 'But does anyone in this privileged position - well-fed and well-loved and all that -' said the younger man 'does anyone like this actually ask for more; do these people actually demand a meaning of life?'
'Oh yes, yes they do. Almost every one of them.' said the older man, with grim certainty.
'Really? Like who? Anyone we know?' asked the younger man, injecting a sudden empiricism into the discussion. The older man grinned sheepishly and said
'Well, for a start, me.'
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