Irish playwright and political activist George Bernard Shaw once asserted that “a life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing”—and all it took was coffee beans to confirm my faith in the validity of his statement.
“Hey Grace,” I heard Matt, my shift manager, holler from the back room. “Do you mind starting the cold brews?”
Yep. Yup. I mind, I thought, very much so. “Of course not!” I felt myself involuntarily agree to his request; the all too familiar feeling of impending doom washing over me as if the nine drinks I was making were simultaneously thrown in my face.
There is not much I do not like doing at my job. I have grown to enjoy the complicated beverage orders, the morning rushes, closing responsibilities, and cleaning. I have grown to appreciate the people—the teachers, doctors, nurses, and families—who time and experience have turned from passing customers into friends. I have even grown to enjoy mopping the floors as a brief escape from the magnitude of life’s expectations. Some of my happiest memories live at the Starbucks on Walkers Brook Drive.
But making cold brew is not one of them. It is a complicated, monotonous process: you begin by lining each Toddy—or brewing container—with a fragile filter, grinding cold brew beans on a French Press setting, adding seven liters of water inside the filter, tying a careful knot to close it, and pouring seven more liters on top of the tied bag. Over the course of the past year, I have messed up virtually every step at least once. I have ripped the filter, left the coffee grinder on its metal filter setting instead of French press and started over after a solid hour, and—arguably most notably—tripped over an open cabinet and dumped all seven liters of cold water down my shirt in front of a crowd of customers.
The most glaring mistake, however, is tying an imperfect knot and watching as the water surrounding the bag fills with coffee grinds. It is a terrible feeling of defeat; a fleeting moment, almost, of self-loathing, when you have to label your hand-crafted cold brew with the “re-filter” sticker so someone can fix it the next day. I would roll my eyes, at that moment, at the words of George Bernard Shaw.
But coffee, I think, can teach us tenacity. We all approach our days and lives with the screaming potential to fail extraordinarily. And when we do, it hurts. It scares us. When I was thrown from a horse for the first time after riding for six years and believed I was invincible, I hit the ground hard and broke my nose; when I elected to complete an online honors-level trigonometry course, I received a 14% on the first quiz—and I dreamed, in both instances, of quitting. I dreamed of giving up, of walking away, because I had ripped that filter. There were grinds—so many grinds—in my cold brew.
But a Toddy can always be re-filtered. No matter how many times we grind coffee beans on the wrong setting; no matter how many times we fall or fail or lose our keys or say the wrong thing at an interview, we can move forward and we can start again. If our cold brew was always perfect—if we never ripped the bag or tripped or spilled the water—how could we appreciate the satisfaction of doing it right? 13 years of horses—of bruises and self-doubt, of fear, of emotion, and of resilience—taught me to love the challenge; a correct answer in trig to keep going, and face calculus next, and then astrophysics. So I will take that risk. I will challenge that belief; I will pursue a degree in political science; I will fight for social justice. I will make Matt’s cold brews and I will make mistakes, because the outcome of persistence is a beautiful, beautiful thing.