(Given the mention of 'drinking' in the subject, I almost posted this in my foodie blog.)
So, without any preamble I'm stating my contention - take it or leave it:
Its not eating, but drinking that is reflective of one's prosperity.
At this point you're probably going "Huh?!" and justifiably so. I too am finding it hard to condense my thoughts in a one-liner. So, let's delve a little deeper.
If one is lucky, one gets 2-3 meals a day. If one is neurotic about it, one eats those 3 meals in 6 smaller bits, but I digress. For most working stiffs, breakfast is lucky if it even gets invited to the daily grind. There's mostly a hurried, sometimes working lunch. Again, if they are lucky - and lucky on multiple levels - dinner is a slightly longer affair, before work emails or chores butt in.
This is true of the super-rich, the well-to-do and even the struggling-to-make-ends-meet.
In all this, where is the leisure that is a crucial symptom of prosperous living? It is absent. Here we contend that leisure defines the quality of living and is therefore a key determinant of prosperity.
Now forget food and think beverages:
Leisurely hour spent with a cup of tea and some friends, or a book, or a book that IS a friend. Clearly, you would only get to do this if you can afford to spare that time. Grabbing a cup of chai in a rush? Sacrilege.
Or think wine - immediately you think of fine company of friends, reflecting on the good things in life, savoring every sip and every deep inhale of the wine. If you are an insufferable oenophile you could also torture each other with weighty pronouncements on the bouquet, body and other mumbo jumbo of wine tasting. But even that requires leisure and friends with absolutely nowhere else they'd be.
If you think coffee, you probably think of grabbing hideous filter coffee from a cafe or gas station in a paper cup, or its fancier sisters in a latte or macchiato - but still grabbed hurriedly and drank on the go or in meetings. But it wasn't always so. The brewing and drinking of coffee too was a time to sit back and take stock of things at a delayed pace.
I'd love to blame it all on starbucks, but they have the leisurely option of hanging out there - until wifi happened and now that leisure is destroyed also.
I was reflecting on these amorphous thoughts sitting with - you guessed it - a glass of wine - in the balcony of the Yosemite valley lodge room and looking in awe at the towering granite cliffs that garland the valley. The wine was bad, with the alcohol being the only agreeable component of it, but I enjoyed it all the same given the leisure that drinking it presupposed and then bestowed. For that hour, I was extremely prosperous.
So, without any preamble I'm stating my contention - take it or leave it:
Its not eating, but drinking that is reflective of one's prosperity.
At this point you're probably going "Huh?!" and justifiably so. I too am finding it hard to condense my thoughts in a one-liner. So, let's delve a little deeper.
If one is lucky, one gets 2-3 meals a day. If one is neurotic about it, one eats those 3 meals in 6 smaller bits, but I digress. For most working stiffs, breakfast is lucky if it even gets invited to the daily grind. There's mostly a hurried, sometimes working lunch. Again, if they are lucky - and lucky on multiple levels - dinner is a slightly longer affair, before work emails or chores butt in.
This is true of the super-rich, the well-to-do and even the struggling-to-make-ends-meet.
Now forget food and think beverages:
Leisurely hour spent with a cup of tea and some friends, or a book, or a book that IS a friend. Clearly, you would only get to do this if you can afford to spare that time. Grabbing a cup of chai in a rush? Sacrilege.
Or think wine - immediately you think of fine company of friends, reflecting on the good things in life, savoring every sip and every deep inhale of the wine. If you are an insufferable oenophile you could also torture each other with weighty pronouncements on the bouquet, body and other mumbo jumbo of wine tasting. But even that requires leisure and friends with absolutely nowhere else they'd be.
If you think coffee, you probably think of grabbing hideous filter coffee from a cafe or gas station in a paper cup, or its fancier sisters in a latte or macchiato - but still grabbed hurriedly and drank on the go or in meetings. But it wasn't always so. The brewing and drinking of coffee too was a time to sit back and take stock of things at a delayed pace.
I'd love to blame it all on starbucks, but they have the leisurely option of hanging out there - until wifi happened and now that leisure is destroyed also.
I was reflecting on these amorphous thoughts sitting with - you guessed it - a glass of wine - in the balcony of the Yosemite valley lodge room and looking in awe at the towering granite cliffs that garland the valley. The wine was bad, with the alcohol being the only agreeable component of it, but I enjoyed it all the same given the leisure that drinking it presupposed and then bestowed. For that hour, I was extremely prosperous.
