If something is not urgent, if you can stop for coffee, then, by all means, do so. Life is too short, and things will always get a bit ruffled, but you must stop for coffee if they are not yet on fire. Slight tardiness is allowed when all we do is on time. It is even appreciated. You must learn to stop for coffee if things are not wholly on fire. This is the only way that you can find a pocket of peace. When I could not, for the life of me, find a day for myself, I learned to steal these little pockets of respite. I was often late to a meeting by a minute or five because I stopped for coffee. Often, you do not need it, but in the time it takes them to make it, and by the time you drink it, about ten minutes have passed. A cup of coffee is rarely about the coffee. This is the trick to taking an undisturbed moment.
There is a reason they call it making time. You can make it like you make coffee. You must only know the method and the ingredients, and like coffee, they, too, vary from person to person and from time to time. And so, experimentation is in order. Once you know, you know, and then you will not have it any other way. This is true for both making time and making coffee. I sat at the coffee shop for five minutes in the evening yesterday with nothing but a warm americano in my hands. It was the only moment I remember where I forgot what it was like to be a person. All people must have moments where they are nobody with no connections, with no strings stretching them in all directions. To be alive is to be a part of an intricate web. And yet, even the bug stuck in the spider’s traps stops its violent buzzing now and then. We must all stop buzzing now and then.
There is but a moment’s peace in it; sometimes, that is all we need. We must all stop for coffee or tea—the drink is never important. It is the stopping. The stopping is the most important thing of all.