While reading one of the volumes in my not inconsiderable library of cycling books I was interested to learn that pro cyclists will often have a double espresso and pasta for breakfast. I favour boiled eggs, toast and a nice cup of tea.
It’s not that I dislike coffee, I enjoy a cappuccino or a latte at any number of coffee shops in my role as a Peer Supporter meeting Peers to talk about recovery, inspire hope and learn how to maintain my own recovery. Coffee shops act as a venue for my work. Before you start thinking that I must be bouncing off the walls after a couple of meetings like this from too much caffeine, let me reassure you – I will order a coffee every time - but I may not necessarily drink it.
For me coffee shops serve as venues for connecting with Peers; helping people who are socially isolated and find bustling places like coffee shops very challenging to spend any time in, to find their feet once more in the outside world.
And so it was for me once.
When I was first off work, and later, after I had given up work and was on Incapacity Benefit, I used to frequent a particular coffee shop. It was a couple of miles from where I was living at the time. I used to go there and sit, for what seemed like hours, with a cup of coffee, a newspaper or a book.
I want to say that it was a positive experience, that the coffee had a medicinal effect, that it perked me up. I’ll come to that; but most of all what it did was fuel my ruminating mind. Don’t mistake rumination for day dreaming. rumination is a hamster wheel of thoughts and feelings that turn and turn and turn, building up their own malign momentum. This mind – work is the equivalent of digging holes and then filling them up again. No insight, no eureka moments, can be found in rumination; it has a self – perpetuating energy that propels moods and thoughts and feelings making them fitter, stronger and more persistent than anything day dreaming can offer. Looking back to that time (roughly 2001 – 5) I can recall how, despite all the doctors’ appointments, medication, all the counselling, the group psychotherapy what they were all up against was me stirring and stirring my unhelpful (as I now like to call them) thoughts and feelings like so much sugar. In short, developing my theories of despair.
The walls of this coffee shop were adorned with pictures of smiling, relaxed people sitting in the sunshine drinking coffee. Over weeks, months, years I sat there drinking coffee (on my own) rarely smiling or relaxing.
But those pictures spoke to me of engaging with the world – but in a lighter, happier way; intense, certainly, but engaging with the world outside and not the damp, dark, echo chambers that form the interior passageways of the soul.
There was another coffee shop that I used to visit quite regularly, too, when I was not feeling up to taking the trip into town. This one was a short walk away. I used to take my coffee upstairs, it was quiet up there, populated by a few smokers (that was allowed back then). I remember one regular. He was somewhat the worse for wear. He used to pour alcohol miniatures into his morning coffee. He did so quite openly – he could see me watching him. We would acknowledge each other with a nod of the head before looking away. Did I want to be like him? No, but…..
There was no eureka moment, but gradually I began to see that I could unhook myself from that kind of future and return to another world, not so hopeless or habit – worn.
One More Cup of Coffee
Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky
Your back is straight your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie
But I don’t sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.
To the valley below.
Your daddy he’s an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He’ll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food.
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.
To the valley below.
Your sister sees the future
Like your mama and yourself
You’ve never learned to read or write
There’s no books upon your shelf
And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.
One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go.
To the valley below.
Bob Dylan (1941 – )
