How Do You Take Your Coffee?

Most cultures that I can think of have a coffee culture. And every culture interacting with another's coffee is quite the comedy act of facial expressions, from pleasant surprise to masked looks of horror. Or, for example, my mother had a coughing fit after tasting Spain's coffee as she sips on a half-coffee, half-milk combination regrettably dismissing her lactose intolerance.

In my case, it was the pleasant complimentary coffee-shot offered after lunching in a Brazilian restaurant. A fan of anything free, I gladly accepted unaware of the sugar bomb about to hit my tastebuds. Yes, Brazilians take their coffee black with tons of sugar in it.

After spending almost two years of my precious 20's in Brazil, I must remark on how appreciative I am to have experienced how they take their coffee (described above), how they address one another (tudo bem?), how many types of dances other than samba they have (I lost count), how many baths they take a day (usually more than one), and how they feel about their government (no comment).

I had learned some of their cultural traditions by a repetitive practice of identifying through difference. They do it this way and we do it that way. They as Brazilians typically eat a larger lunch, we Americans typically eat a larger dinner. They eat rice and beans at lunch and we eat sandwiches or salads. They are relaxed about timeliness, we are punctual. They value time-off, we value overtime. Now these were ways of identifying a group of people in order to try and begin to chip away my understanding of what it is to BE Brazilian.

But what happens when you meet a Brazilian that doesn't take sugar in her coffee, that doesn't eat rice and beans everyday, that is very punctual and that is a workaholic? Now, there we start to get confused again of Brazilian identity. I would argue that these moments of confusion are more important than understanding the "typical" Brazilian. Perhaps that is obvious, but I feel that each time I learned a friend had atypical Brazilian practices (from my topical understanding), I learned more about the human condition than anything. That is, how quick we are to categorize, and how quick those categorize can be broken down! So, in fact, the question "How do you take your coffee?" is a rather personal, defining moment. Tom Hanks says so himself:

And in the end, I must admit, I rather enjoy that coffee-flavored sugar bomb after a nice full lunch of rice, beans, meat and salad. Thank you Brazil, for ever so politely introducing me to new ways of doing things and ultimately expanding my horizons. 

Feeding Your Auto Pilot

Coming back to my hometown after another school year in Brazil, I started to notice how automatic some things are. For example, arriving to my grandpa's house, albeit 45 minutes away, I could have sworn that I just blinked my eyes. Or playing soccer with my brother, I noticed how the motions to trap and kick a ball were automatic. Playing the piano came back with more difficulty but after some searching I was playing the same tunes I learned back when I was taking lessons. Finally, the one that surprised me most, as someone very interested in languages, I turned on the radio to the Southern California Spanish radio and found myself singing the songs automatically in Spanish. This is big because I thought I had replaced all of my Spanish vocabulary with Portuguese, having lived in Brazil for a majority of the past two years. I was in awe at these examples of muscle memory, just by being back in the context and cuing the activity, my muscles responded.

Of course, all of my readers have experienced this, even if it was just writing, but it got me to thinking about what things we are training our body and mind to do. How important it is to input good stuff! By setting a good foundation, we can then trust our muscle memory to perform accordingly in the future. What actions do you want to be habitual or natural? Positivity, helpfulness, humility, honesty, chastity. You pick, but you need to start and continue to form that muscle memory.

As I was out to lunch with my grandpa who will turn 100 in a few days, I realize that he himself has been practicing this for quite some time. Some information he repeats enough so that his brain muscle responds when needed. Not saying anything bad about anyone is also a practice; going to daily mass is a practice. These things he wanted to do, and at some point he must have decided to begin these practices. Of course, he would say that these things are only by God's grace! Indeed we can all learn a bit from focusing on how we would like to form our muscle memory. Thanks, Grandpa, for an excellent example in how to feed our auto-pilot.