An Attempt at Society: Cafe Edition

By Dina Fawaz on December 3, 2015

Ah, cafes.

Sitting in a cafe is what I like to call “My Attempt at Society.” Allow me to explain: While sitting in a cafe all by yourself, you are surrounded by an abundance of living, breathing, real-life human beings.

You’ve got your average coffee-goer, ordering an extra espresso shot in their already 3 shot surgery cup of heartburn.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/coffee+gifs

You’ve got your tea-drinker, you know, the people who come all the way to a coffee shop just to pay for flavored hot water.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/tea+gifs

You’ve got your basic college student, laptop open so it looks like they are studying when really they are probably just refreshing their email and deciding which Ellen interview to watch next.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/they+see+me+scrollin

Moral of the story: people are everywhere around you. Yet, you’re still all alone. You have the ability to basically turn invisible, put your headphones in to drown the soft hum of the conversations around you, realizing that no one’s attention is actually on you and slowly become just another coffee-goer, tea-drinker, or basic college student. You have no obligations to converse with any humans in that cafe, yet you could if you wanted to because there are many around you.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/introvert+gifs

This, my readers, is “My Attempt at Society.” One of my very few attempts at society, considering the number of times I willingly leave my bedroom is under 5.

Now there are many other places that this sort of thing could happen at; for example, a library or a train. However, cafes have coffee and espresso and cool mugs with the cool milk thing in them:

tumblr_no6tefMO2l1tdetyio1_1280

and yummy pastries (that are extremely over-priced but I still buy them so I can get the full cafe experience.) and tea SO therefore I deem cafes as the best place to attempt society.

The best part about cafes, however, is how for a moment, if just a second,  you share something in common with every single other person in that cafe. In the mist of each human’s life; more specifically, that particular day, they have come to the same exact cafe as you at the same exact time as you. Each person is there for a reason, whether it is to grab a drink on their lunch break or meet up with an old friend to talk over coffee for hours, they have chosen that very cafe where you just happen to be at. You don’t even need to talk to them and probably never will in this lifetime, but you get to witness a part of their day, no matter how small that part is, and I think that is pretty cool.

PSA to all introverts: When you start feeling irrelevant to society because you’ve realized you haven’t left your room since the Vietnam War,

https://www.tumblr.com/search/introvert+gifs

I suggest going to a cafe. I promise you will not regret it.

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