Why I Keep Going to Cafés

People often assume I go to cafés for the coffee.

The truth is, I barely notice it.

What keeps bringing me back is something else.

A café is one of the few places where life slows down just enough to become visible.

Someone is reading a book they can’t put down.

Two friends are having a conversation that looks like it has been waiting years to happen.

An elderly couple sits together in complete silence, somehow saying more than the loudest table in the room.

A waiter weaves between people as if he’s performing a dance he’s rehearsed a thousand times.

Nobody came here to be observed.

And yet, everyone is quietly telling a story.

I don’t know their names.

I don’t know where they’re going afterwards.

For a few minutes, our lives simply cross.

Sometimes I wonder how many stories I’ve walked past without noticing.

How many moments disappear because I’m thinking about the next thing instead of the one unfolding in front of me.

Perhaps that’s why I love cafés so much.

They remind me that life isn’t only happening in the big moments.

It’s happening while someone stirs their coffee absent-mindedly.

While a child laughs at something no one else understands.

While a stranger stares out of the window, lost somewhere I’ll never know.

I used to think I went to cafés to write.

Now I think I go there to remember how to look.

The writing comes later.