Percolator VS. Coffee Maker: Choosing To Steep In "GREAT" Ideas

Today, like most days, I awoke tired. On these days I kick-start myself awake by pumping my body with human gasoline, the magical juice that keeps first world humanity going. This invaluable liquid I’m referring is, of course, coffee. Coffee is a beautiful drink, but the real reason I want to discuss the methodology of making it has much more to do with the way our culture is trying to ingest ideas then beverages. But first we need to discuss the brown bean a bit before getting on to the uncanny parallels between coffee and culture.

Coffee needs no introduction but out of respect I will give it a brief one. According to my extensive research (on Wikipedia), coffee first came out of Arabia in the 15^th century. Like so many other wonderful items it made it ways across the Mediterranean Sea before exploding in popularity throughout Europe and eventually landing on my side of the Pacific Ocean in America. As it gained popularity over the centuries wise men from all corners of the globe (which has no corners but we’ll explore that in later posts) tinkered and experimented with various ways to get the most out of the bitter nectar of life. This has left the world with an absurd amount tools and techniques to get our java juice out of those magic beans and into our veins and membranes. Even today you can find lists of all the new and improved ways of making that morning brew. My local third wave coffee roaster Stumptown goes so far as to make video tutorials to tell you just how to use coffee to wow your friends (which requires all their products of course).

Despicable...

However, for all this rich coffee history, many American’s have fallen on the “lazy mans” style of making coffee, the Mr. Coffee coffee maker. Of all the despicable methods of coffee making this one is the worst. Its crude methodology only soaks the grounds once and hopes that the flavor seeps through as it laboriously trickles over.

I’m no coffee expert and to be completely frank I actually do not care that much about my coffee being of the highest caliber. At the end of the day coffee is simply a tool to wake up my tired and burdened morning bones, and a more enjoyable tool then taking a cold shower or actually getting a proper amount of sleep. But bare with me a little longer as I describe one more technique, because the analogy it projects has profound implications for our lives.

The Beautiful Percolator

Of all the methods of transferring taste, and caffeine into my coffee without receiving a cup full of grinds, the one I enjoy the most is a device called a percolator. Now to percolate is to filter slowly a gas or liquid through a porous material and a percolator does this with your coffee grinds over and over again. The way it works is by sucking the water up a metal straw to the top and dousing the grinds over and over again, repeatedly immersing the water in the flavor as it boils. The result is a thoroughly tasty cup a jo with a natural flare to it that destroys any coffee makers poor attempts to match. It takes just as little work, and finishes faster then a coffee maker, and also allows you to determine exactly what size and ratio of coffee you want in it.

If your not a coffee connoisseur this is most likely far more then you needed to read about coffee, and no, a company that sells percolators is not sponsoring this…yet! The reason I wanted to talk about this is because it is a near perfect representation of how our culture is absorbing new and improved ideas verses how I believe our culture should be absorbing ideas. Many noted authors, cultural commentators, sociologists, and general laymen have noted that the world only seems to be getting smaller while the amount of information available is expanding far past what we can reasonably keep up with and ingest. This is not a new problem. Our brains simply are not designed to be dusty computer hard drives full of unnecessary knowledge. And yet, we treat our brains like they should be these super computers, which can recall any necessary stray piece of information we have ever heard at any moment so that we’ll always appear to know more than anyone around us. Pride and insecurity dwell deep in hearts and drive us to a desire to keep up with everything going on in this overwhelming hurricane of information that daily bombards our doorstep.

Our pursuit of knowledge leads us to quickly grab onto new knowledge, take the quick douse as it seeps over our brain, before downing and dowsing our brain with something else. This method of quickly attempting to inherit all the information of the world in one go is the human equivalent of the coffee makers style. This style ultimately overwhelms our weary minds with intolerable amounts of information that do not need and week later do not remember.

There are two facts I believe are essential to root deep within us if we hope to survive the chaotic maelstrom of information.

1. Admit you cannot keep up.

            There is too much for you or me or anyone to possibly keep up with being thrown into the Internet everyday. By admitting we cannot keep up we give ourselves the freedom to choose who and what we want to keep up with. So sure follow your favorite sports team, be plugged into your family, know what’s going on in the realm of your specialty, but don’t expect to know everything about everything all the time. When you give yourself this freedom you will find yourself implicitly giving this freedom to others as well. This creates a more freeing environment for discussion that feels less like a competition and more like an unexpected and surprisingly intriguing dinner party discussion.

2. Give up the “good” for the “great!”

            This is a life altering and transforming truth. Credit goes to Bob Goff and Donald Miller for introducing me to this idea (their incredibly people. Truly greats at shaping perspective and helping us tell better stories with our lives). We need to give up dousing ourselves once with a lot of good information and instead allow ourselves to sit and reflect on great information. Stop and think about what quotes, books, movies, and people have had the greatest impact on your life. Instead of trying to fill your mind with the newest “good” advice, go back and relook at the truly great advice. Spend a day and let certain key quotes soak into your essence. Have a conversation with a mentor or someone who breathes life into your work. Sit and listen on repeat to a song that moves you or skim through a book and look at those places you highlighted and reread what you found so striking. These are the “great” ideas we need to have deeply ingrained within us. These are the ideas we need to percolate through time and time again until we embody the truth they envelop.

There is an abundance of new information constantly on the horizon. Catchy headlines plague our browsers, screaming for our clicks and likes. They are not all bad, but simply indulging in the information of yesterday repackaged for today without ever learning the rooted message will leave you forever lacking. Instead steep yourself in the “Great” lessons from your own and others history, so that you might learn to be who you want to be, and avoid repeating the past. Do not be the lazy cog who simply skims through pop thought of the day, be the wise monk who reflects on the simply truth to produce the profound and beautiful.