Elysha and I pulled into the Starbucks parking lot, weaving around a dozen cars lined up in the drive-thru lane so we could park.
She was running inside for coffee that she preordered on the app.
The drive-thru line was so long it stretched onto the street. Meanwhile, the interior of the Starbuck was utterly bereft of customers.
“What are those people thinking?” Elysha wondered aloud as we weaved our way around the drive-thru line and back into the street.
I agreed. What the hell are these people thinking?
And yes, a few of them may have had sleeping children in the back seat or a painful sciatic nerve that made entering and exiting the vehicle challenging, but all twelve?
No way.
Most of these people were fools. While baristas waited inside to fulfill orders, they sat in a drive-thru line, wasting time.
Elysha was right. What the hell are these people thinking?
But what I didn’t tell Elysha was this:
The whole damn world looks like a Starbucks drive-thru line for me. All day long, I watch people dither away minutes like they are meaningless. They plow through life assuming that there will always be a tomorrow. I watch people leisurely stroll through parking lots like it’s a fine place to spend quality time. They doom-scroll through social media or play stupid games on their phones while complaining about never having enough time in the day to get things done. They fret over minuscule, irrelevant detritus while ignoring the mountains of meaning standing before them. I listen as they promise to start chasing their dreams – someday – when the time is right.
As if “the time is just right” moments are like dandelions, popping up wherever you look.
Every damn day, I watch people treat their most precious commodity – time – like it’s a Canadien penny.
Every day, everywhere I look, I see twelve-car pile-ups in a Starbuck drive-thru.
And yes, I know… this view of the world is highly predicated on my own personal values and beliefs. It presupposes that my approach to life is the ideal one. It’s admittedly harsh, judgmental, sanctimonious, and prickish.
It probably makes me sound like a jerk.
But here’s something else I know:
The future versions of all those people in the Starbuck drive-thru line, who could’ve just as easily gone inside an empty store to pick up their coffee, agree with me.
When the future versions of those people look back on their lives and think about what they’ve accomplished and how they spent their time, they will regret every minute wasted with foolishness that could have been spent chasing their dreams, playing with their kids, enjoying the company of friends and loved ones, walking dogs, petting cats, reading books, exercising, watching great movies, making music, having sex, growing vegetables, staring at clouds, walking through parks, visiting museums, napping, skipping, baking, and a multitude of other meaningful, memorable things.
I know I sound like an arrogant, self-righteous jerk today, but I suspect that the future versions of these time-wasters are enthusiastically siding with me.
