Taking advantage of the moment, he told me a story about his travels to South America. He remembered a seemingly insignificant experience in San Pedro, Guatemala, where he watched a few young boys play soccer in a yard. On the edge of their makeshift field there was a pile of coffee beans drying in the sun. One of the boys kicked the ball out of bounds and the three of them went running barefoot across the coffee beans, completely oblivious to them. At that moment he thought about the fact that those beans would likely wind up in the grinder at a small coffee shop just like ours, with customers consuming their juice with no realization of the journey they'd encountered.
An hour or two later the same man lingered at the counter. As I poured a cup of beans into the grinder I apologized for the loud noise about to curse his ears. He looked at me and said, "You should never apologize. When you say 'I'm sorry,' you're not just saying it to me, but to everyone around you, to the universe. You're giving birth to words that shouldn't exist. If I were concerned about the noise, then I shouldn't have chosen this spot to sit. My friends and I play the pinching game, and every time one of says 'I'm sorry 'we pinch each other as a reminder that not one of us really has anything at all to be sorry for."
Contributed by Aryn.
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