The One and the Many
Coffee being grown in Guatemala. Pictured is one bean that is beginning to ripen.
I love coffee. My relationship to coffee has varied throughout the years, from enjoyed for its complex flavours to abused to fuel the caffeine- induced intensity that I needed to sustain my frenetic pace. So when Trudy and I were planning our trip to Guatemala in the fall of 2024, one of the short-listed activities was to visit a coffee plantation.
To our great fortune, we didn’t have far to travel from our hotel. A short 7-minute Uber had us dropped off at the gate of the plantation. We toured the museum, sampled the coffee (and chocolate), watched hummingbirds, and of course walked through the vast network of trails under the canopy of the shade trees providing shelter for the thousands of coffee plants underneath.
I was a little disappointed to find out that we had missed the previous harvest by approximately two months and would not be able to watch the coffee undergoing the various stages of transformation from berry to bean. What we did get to see is the next crop of berries growing on the branches of coffee plants.
The branch pictured above caught my attention. In the middle of the centre bunch was a solitary red berry. For whatever reason it was ripening faster than the other berries. It stood out. One coffee berry doesn’t do much by itself. It won’t make anyone rich, adding only grams to the amount of coffee needed to brew one cup of coffee. But it is significant all the same.
The lone red berry captures the attention in the photo. The berries surrounding it along with the other two bunches on either side of the diagonal branch balance out the image always drawing the eye of the observer back into the centre of image and the one red berry. Without it the viewer would lose interest seeing only shades of green everywhere else.
So too in life, at home and in our work we need the people with the pop of colour, the ones who spark our imagination and arrest our attention to create the interest that makes our lives beautiful. They are the ones who are willing to stand out, resist the urge to assimilate, and bring new ways of knowing into our consciousness.
Look around and notice the people who spark that creativity, inviting you to think outside the ordinary. They are necessary. Resist the urge to purge them from your circle because they aren’t the same. It is likely that they are just further ahead than the rest of us.
This photo is dedicated to all those who are that spark of colour. I’ve created a limited print of this photo. I’ve created 10 copies (size 8” by 10”) for you to buy. Each $14.99 - mailed anywhere in Canada.
