I thought I’d throw a little English banter into today’s chatter. It seemed fitting while I sat here with a cup of coffee and a recording of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds playing in the background.
I record shows when they air and watch them when life gives me a moment. This morning, while the Enterprise traveled through space, my mind wandered back to the days when I was a young chap watching cowboys ride across the television screen.
There was Rawhide, Hopalong Cassidy, and Gene Autry singing his way through the West. I enjoyed them all. But even as a boy, I thought some of those fellows had an easy time of it. The cowboy I knew best had horses to feed, cattle to tend, and work waiting for him whether the cameras were rolling or not.
That cowboy was my dad.
I watched him care for our animals day after day. He was tough, capable, and steady. To me, he was the real thing. He was my hero from the beginning.
What I don’t know is whether I ever told him that clearly enough.
We sometimes assume the people we love already know what they mean to us. Maybe they do. But hearing it from us can still make a difference. A few honest words can stay with someone long after the morning is over.
So while you have your coffee today, think of someone who matters to you. Tell them what you admire about them. Thank them for something they taught you. Let them know that the ordinary things they do have never looked ordinary to you.
You don’t need a grand speech. You just need to say it while they’re here to hear it.
My dad never rode across a television screen. But after all these years, he is still the cowboy I remember best.
I don’t know whether it was an Oklahoma City thing or whether listeners elsewhere heard it, too. In the mid-1980s, I kept my patrol radio tuned to KATT, The Rock 1000. One of my favorite parts of the morning was a voice that came on with a greeting something like, “Hello, babysitters. This is Clarence, and this is the All My Children update.”
Clarence had a deep voice and a gift for recapping the previous day’s soap opera. He would run through the latest goings-on, slipping into impressions of the characters along the way. I could be miles into a patrol shift, carrying whatever the night had handed me, and that voice would give me a few minutes to laugh.
I needed those minutes. Some of the officers I worked with used enough starch in their underwear to stand at attention without getting out of the patrol car.
Around the station, I was known as the Lone Eagle. I worked the south district, and when I headed south, I soared. Some nights brought felony arrests. Other nights, I found a way to upset an elected city official who probably thought the hour made him unreachable.
Then there was Mildred.
Her husband was a city councilman, and the chief had agreed to put her on the reserve police force. How that arrangement came about, I couldn’t say. What I knew was that Mildred talked through an entire eight-hour shift without seeming to draw a breath. Riding with her was like attending a farm auction where the auctioneer never stopped and the hog never sold. Every so often, the hog would snort, and the bidding would begin again.
Somehow, no matter how the schedule was arranged, Mildred ended up in my unit. The other officers wouldn’t take her. I was the least senior officer on those nights, so I got the assignment.
One night, I lost my patience.
I asked Mildred if she had ever wondered why she always rode with me. She said she thought it was because I liked having her along. I told her that wasn’t it. I said it more harshly than I should have.
She looked genuinely surprised. She hadn’t noticed that other reserve officers got different assignments while she kept getting mine. I told her the others complained about riding with her. When she thought I was making it up, I played a mini-cassette recording of officers saying just that.
Mildred listened. Then she said, “Oh, Ben, you ought to hear what they say about you before you get to the station to pick me up.”
“I know,” I told her. “You don’t think this is the only tape I have, do you?”
I didn’t stop there. I said things about her husband and why I thought he wanted her out of the house. I had no proof of that. I was angry, and I wanted my words to land. I also told her what I expected to happen next: she would go home upset, her husband would complain to the chief, and sooner or later something would happen to me at work.
I drove back to police headquarters and gave her one sentence she could repeat.
“Get the hell out of my unit.”
That night may sound like a scene Clarence could have recapped the next morning: a councilman’s wife, a tape recorder, a patrol officer who finally said too much, and trouble waiting at the station. But there was nothing funny about what followed. Two matters did arise that left me feeling exposed and unable to defend myself as I might have at another time.
My father had died, and I was still crushed by it. I feared a public fight would hurt my family. A year later, I believe I would have fought with everything I had. At that moment, I pulled back.
When I think about those patrol mornings now, I still hear Clarence’s voice cutting through the radio. For a few minutes, his account of somebody else’s drama gave me room to breathe. I had no idea how much I would miss that little break when the drama became my own.
In the months that followed, a series of events unfolded. I’ve written about some of them. Others I’ve never told publicly. That changes in October, when I’ll share what happened and why it sent shock waves through our community and local law enforcement. Watch for the first installment of October Surprises.
Before I get too far into this story, I should tell you where I began retelling it: in an ambulance on the way to the emergency room.
The driver asked what had happened. I told him I had apparently performed the Groff Tenkiller Stunt again, nearly forty years after the original. Naturally, he asked what that meant. It was a fair question. He had no way of knowing that the answer involved a lake in Oklahoma, a cliff, a cooler of beer, and a group of friends operating under names like Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten, and Red Foley.
There were seven or eight of us at Lake Tenkiller that weekend, depending on who you ask. Finest people you’ll ever meet, I told the driver. Depending on who you ask about that, too. We had escaped the cities for a little relief from our busy lives. Between our aliases, we sounded like the Sex Pistols had rented a boat with the cast of Gilligan’s Island. I must have been the slinger, because I spent much of that weekend slinging my body around.
I remember a rough night before our trip to the cliffs. At one point we were laughing about a helicopter landing so close to our camp that it might ruin our efforts to keep our identities mysterious. Then came word that Merle Haggard would be in nearby Muskogee. I announced that we ought to go. Surely Merle would let us in wherever he was. We hatched a plan, though calling it a plan gives it more credit than it deserves.
While that was taking shape, we took some beer to a cliff near the dam. The warnings against jumping were clear. We were young enough to believe we had plenty of time to worry about warnings later. My friends started diving. I watched from above, because I have always had a terrible fear of heights.
Then someone shouted that we were out of beer. I could help with that. Rob came with me to get another cooler from the truck. Somewhere along the path, I stepped off a rock that turned out to be more cliff than rock and injured my right ankle. I poured the only alcohol I had over it: beer. It was a poor attempt at first aid, but I was young and convinced I knew what I was doing.
As I limped back toward the water, I met a group of women carrying their own cooler. I invited them to join us and told them we were a rock-and-roll band enjoying a day off. Soon I was leading what I understood to be cheerleaders from the Muskogee area down to the cliffs.
My friends came up out of the water, shook out their ears, and stared. I had left to get beer and returned with an audience. I made one intentional cliff jump that afternoon and received a hero’s applause for bringing the party with me. I felt like Barney Fife after solving a crime.
The ankle was less impressed. Between the fall, my beer treatment, and the afternoon in the lake, it became badly infected. By the time I got home, I couldn’t get my uniform boot on. My doctor put me on antibiotics and pain medication and took me off duty for two weeks. As it happened, I had enough accumulated time from overtime that taking the leave kept me from eventually losing it.
That was the first Groff Tenkiller Stunt.
Nearly forty years later, on a Sunday afternoon in Arizona, I was walking from our bedroom toward the kitchen to finish preparing dinner. Something went dark. I turned, missed whatever I was trying to see, turned back, and tripped over myself. I blacked out and broke my leg and ankle in two places.
When I tried to stand, I fell forward. Steve came out of his recliner and told me not to move. I tried anyway. I went down like a dead mackerel.
I looked at my ankle, thought it was out of place, moved it, and told Steve, “See? That’s all it needed.” Then I tried to stand again. The pain proved my diagnosis was lacking. I screamed loudly enough to bring Otis to my side. He looked at me as though someone had tried to kill me.
“Good boy,”
I told him.
We tried the neighbors. Nobody was home. We even looked around our 55-plus community for a wheelchair someone might have left on a patio. No luck. I suggested I could scoot to the car. I made it about a cheek and a half before everything started going dark again.
It was four in the afternoon, but I felt as though night was closing in. Steve checked my blood pressure: 80 over 50, with a pulse around 90. I finally said what neither of us had wanted to say.
“I think this is the time we actually call 911.”
When the fire crew arrived, I was glad to see them, though I tried to keep a little dignity about it. Soon I was in the ambulance explaining the Groff Tenkiller Stunt to a driver who had only asked a simple question.
That’s how an old memory turned into a patrol story. Once I started talking about Oklahoma, I remembered the mornings I spent driving my district with KATT on the radio, waiting for Clarence and his All My Children update. For a few minutes each day, he could make somebody else’s troubles sound entertaining.
And then I remembered Mildred, the wife of a city councilman. Neither of us knew it yet, but we were about to change the course of each other’s lives.
Maybe you’re reading this over your first cup of coffee.
Maybe you’re on your way to work, letting someone’s voice read it aloud to you. I have no idea what I sound like on your end. Jimmy Stewart? Hank Hill? Cousin Itt? Perhaps Thing from The Addams Family is signing along. If it’s Bart Simpson?, please don’t let him drive.
Whatever voice you’ve given me, let me tell you about two fellows I saw at a convenience store.
The first was studying a basket of muffins. He leaned toward his friend and said,
“I could nab two of those, and nobody would even see me. I’m that quick.”
His friend said nothing. He just watched as the man slipped a muffin into each coat pocket.
I saw it. His friend saw it. The clerk did not.
Then the friend smiled.
“I can do better than that.”
He walked to the counter and asked the clerk,
“Would you like to see me make two of your freshest muffins disappear and then reappear?”
The clerk, curious now, handed him two muffins.
The man ate them both.
“Well,”
the clerk said,
“you made them disappear. How are you going to make them reappear?”
The man pointed across the store.
“Look in my friend’s coat pockets.”
I don’t know which of those two men walked out feeling cleverer. I do know the clerk ended up with quite a story to tell.
So take a sip of coffee, put a little spring in your step, and enjoy the start of your day. And if someone at the convenience store offers to show you a muffin trick, check your pockets first.
Some people need a cup of coffee to wake up. Others need a Loch Ness Monster.
Changing perspectives…
I heard a joke about a man who set out across Loch Ness to prove there was no monster. He was an atheist, too, and quite sure he knew what he would find: a lake, some water, and a good story somebody had made up.
Then his boat reached the middle of the lake. The sky darkened. The shoreline disappeared. And out of the water rose a creature towering over his boat.
“God, help me!” the man cried.
A voice came down from above. “That’s interesting. Five minutes ago, you didn’t believe in me.”
The man looked up and shouted, “Five minutes ago, I didn’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster, either!”
I have to give him that one. If a monster rose beside my boat, I would reconsider several things at once. I might even develop a sudden appreciation for life jackets, fast motors, and staying home.
Changing your mind when the facts change makes sense. But I have watched people change their views without a monster, a fact, or even a decent explanation in sight. An idea is terrible at breakfast, then brilliant by lunch because someone they admire said it out loud. The evidence hasn’t changed. The company has.
I suppose we have all done a little of that. Before the first cup of coffee, I can be certain I don’t need a second. Five minutes later, the pot starts looking mighty persuasive.
So today, if someone’s opinion changes in an instant, I may ask myself what appeared: new evidence, a new audience, or a creature rising out of the lake?
If it’s the creature, I’m changing my mind, too. And I’m taking my coffee to go.
The day may arrive all at once, but we can only live it one moment at a time. Begin with the coffee, take the next good step, and let the rest of the morning wait its turn.
I haven’t even placed my feet on the floor, yet my mind is standing beside the bed with a clipboard.
There are messages to answer, bills to remember, appointments to keep, stories to write, and several little things I promised myself I would do yesterday. Before I have poured my first cup of coffee, my brain has scheduled enough work to exhaust three people—and at least one of them should be younger than I am.
Just start counting the stress away 1…2…3…4…
That is the trouble with mornings. The day arrives all at once, even though we can only live it one moment at a time.
Coffee understands this.
It doesn’t leap from the container into the cup fully prepared. The water must heat. The grounds must be measured. The coffee must brew. Then comes the cream, sugar, or whatever little ceremony makes the cup your own.
Nobody stands beside the coffee maker shouting, “Hurry up! We have an entire day to finish!”
Well, perhaps somebody does. But that person should probably be sent back to bed.
Coffee takes the time coffee takes.
Maybe we should grant ourselves the same kindness.
We do not have to solve every problem before breakfast. We do not have to know how the entire day will unfold. We don’t even have to feel particularly enthusiastic about it. Sometimes our first accomplishment is simply getting out of bed. The next may be finding our glasses and remembering why we walked into the kitchen.
Progress is still progress, even when it arrives wearing slippers.
I have discovered that a day becomes much less intimidating when I stop carrying all twenty-four hours at once. I only need to carry this moment.
Drink the coffee.
Answer one message.
Make one decision.
Do the next decent thing.
Then do another.
Some days will still become tangled. Plans will change. Someone will call just as we sit down. Something we carefully placed where we would remember it will disappear into that mysterious dimension occupied by missing socks, reading glasses, and important pieces of paper.
That does not mean the day has been lost.
There is still time to do some Fall Cleaning. Remember -– This is the first week of Autumn and Fall cleaning is not only for closets and cupboards. Sometimes our memories need to be taken down, dusted off, and placed where we can see them again.
A good day does not have to be a perfect day. It only needs a few honest moments: a kindness offered, a responsibility met, a laugh we didn’t expect, or the decision to begin again after something went wrong.
So, if this morning already feels too heavy, set part of it down.
You were never expected to carry the entire day before breakfast.
Begin with the coffee. Let it warm your hands. Take a breath and allow the world to turn without your supervision for a minute or two.
The day will still be waiting.
But perhaps, after that first cup, it won’t look quite so large.
Go ahead get a another cup, and enjoy your morning!
Are you exhausted before your feet even reach the floor? Today’s Morning Coffee is a reminder that you don’t have to carry all twenty-four hours at once—and progress still counts when it arrives wearing slippers.
Motivation does not always arrive before the work begins. Sometimes we must take one small step, interrupt the stillness, and give it a chance to catch up with us.
Motivation has a habit of arriving after the work begins.
Good morning, folks.
There are mornings when determination charges through the front door, throws open the curtains, and announces, “Let’s get something done!”
Then there are mornings when determination apparently has the day off.
The coffee is brewing. The sun is rising. The clock is moving. But we are sitting there waiting for some grand burst of motivation to lift us from the chair and carry us into the day.
Unfortunately, motivation can be terribly unreliable.
If we wait until we feel completely prepared, confident, rested, organized, and inspired, we may still be sitting beside the coffee pot when lunchtime arrives.
Sometimes we must begin before we feel ready.
Put on the shoes.
Make the telephone call.
Write the first sentence.
Wash the first dish.
Open the door and step outside.
Sometimes when Fall arrives it seems that time is off. That the moment we are in is all backwards. The evening is offset. The clock is moving slower than it should. Then all of the sudden it is later than it should be. That is what happens when time Falls back. Whether the time changes or not. The sun sets earlier, comes up sooner, or moves across the sky at a different pace. Autumn begins to change the way you move.
The first movement may be small, but small movements have a way of waking up the rest of us. One completed task leads to another. Before long, the day that seemed determined to go nowhere has discovered a destination.
I have learned that life rarely sends a marching band to announce the proper moment to begin. There may be no drumroll, perfect weather, or encouraging voice from the heavens. Most beginnings arrive quietly, disguised as an ordinary decision:
“I suppose I had better get started.”
That sentence has launched more accomplishments than we will ever know.
You do not need to conquer the entire day before breakfast. You only need to interrupt the stillness. Give yourself one honest reason to rise, move forward, and show the world you have not surrendered your place in it.
The coffee cannot do everything.
It can warm your hands, clear a little fog from your mind, and perhaps make other people safer to be around. But eventually, you must set down the cup and take the first step.
So begin before you feel ready.
Motivation may be running late—but once it sees you moving, it usually hurries to catch up.
Until tomorrow, may your coffee stay warm, your memories stay close, and your hope stay strong…
—Benjamin Groff II Morning Coffee at benandsteve.com
Before the telephone rings, the messages arrive, and the world begins making its demands, the morning gives us a few quiet moments to gather ourselves. We should not hurry past them.
There is a small stretch of time each morning before the day begins asking things of us.
Before the telephone rings. Before the messages arrive. Before the headlines tell us what we should fear, question, or become angry about. For a few precious moments, there is only the sound of coffee pouring into a cup and the quiet promise of another day.
We often hurry through that silence without realizing how valuable it is. We begin making lists in our minds. We remember what we forgot yesterday and worry about what might go wrong today. Before our feet have carried us very far, our thoughts have already run several miles ahead.
But perhaps the morning was never meant to be a starting gun.
Perhaps it was given to us as a gentle place to gather ourselves—to sit quietly, take a breath, and remember that we are more than our obligations. We are more than the chores waiting in the next room, the appointments written on the calendar, or the problems we have not yet solved.
The world will make its demands soon enough. It always does. But it can wait long enough for us to finish one warm cup of coffee.
So, this morning, give yourself permission to remain still for another moment. Notice the light coming through the window. Listen for the familiar sounds of home. Think of someone who has made your life better simply by being part of it.
You do not have to accomplish anything during these few quiet minutes. You only have to be present for them.
Before the day asks something of you, allow the morning to give something to you: a little peace, a little strength, and another reason to be grateful you are here.
Until tomorrow, may your coffee stay warm, your memories stay close, and your hope stay strong. The coffee will be waiting again tomorrow, and I hope you’ll be here to share it with me.
The world will begin asking things of you soon enough. But before it does, sit quietly, take another sip, and allow the morning to give something back. Today’s Morning Coffee is waiting.
A friends list should not require complete agreement. The better question is not whether someone thinks like us, but whether they can disagree while still treating others with dignity.
Two smartphones rest beside coffee cups in a warmly lit, relaxed workspace.
This weekend, Steve and I found ourselves discussing a modern-day question: Who should we remain social media friends with?
It’s the first day of fall, so you know what that means: seasonal cleaning! Grab the broom and dusting cloth, clear away yesterday’s dust, and make room for everything this new season may bring.
Some of our online friends are people we know personally. Others entered our lives professionally. Some are kinfolk—and, as everyone knows, you do not get to choose your kinfolk. You simply learn which subjects should never be discussed at Thanksgiving.
Then there are the people we have never met. By every traditional definition, they are strangers. Yet, through years of comments, photographs, birthday wishes and shared stories, some of them have become more thoughtful and dependable than people we once saw every day.
Our friends lists also contain a few hangovers from our school years. Some go all the way back to kindergarten, while others joined us somewhere between high school and our last stop in higher education. There are former coworkers, old neighbors, distant cousins and people we once knew well but now recognize primarily by their profile pictures.
Together, they make up this grand and rather peculiar collection called a “friends list.”
The question Steve and I discussed was whether the things these people post could affect how others see us. Does remaining connected to someone suggest that we agree with everything that person believes?
Suppose a distant social media friend—someone we have never met—announces that they are against oxygen. Suddenly, the rumor begins circulating that Ben and Steve want people to stop breathing.
That would be the furthest thing from the truth. We want almost everyone to continue breathing.
But social media does not leave much room for careful distinctions. A friendship, a “like,” or even a silent connection can sometimes be interpreted as an endorsement. People may assume that because someone appears on our friends list, we approve of everything that person says.
That brings us to the difficult part: Who stays, and who goes?
Should one negative political post be enough to unfriend someone? Probably not. Most of us have had a bad day, written something too quickly or allowed frustration to speak before good judgment arrived.
Disagreement alone is not necessarily a reason to end a friendship. If someone dislikes watermelons, for instance, I might question their judgment—but I would not immediately remove them from my life.
However, if they begin posting that people who eat watermelons are destroying America, should be denied medical care and ought to be rounded up before the next family picnic, then we have moved beyond a harmless difference of opinion.
There is a difference between disagreeing with people and demeaning them.
Someone may disagree with our politics, our religion, our marriage or the way we live our lives. They have that right. But we also have the right to decide what behavior we will welcome into our personal space.
A friends list should not require complete agreement. If it did, most of us would eventually be left talking only to ourselves—and even then, I occasionally disagree with myself.
The better question may not be, “Does this person think like me?” It may be, “Does this person treat others with basic dignity?”
Can they disagree without becoming cruel? Can they discuss an issue without insulting entire groups of people? Do their posts contribute something worthwhile, or do they exist mainly to provoke fear, anger and division? When they discover that something they shared was false, do they correct it—or simply move on to the next falsehood?
Those questions tell us much more about a person than whether they vote the same way we do.
There is also a difference between making a mistake and establishing a pattern. One thoughtless post can be forgiven. A steady stream of hatred, personal attacks and deliberate misinformation becomes a choice.
At that point, unfriending someone is not necessarily an act of punishment. It may simply be an act of housekeeping.
We clean our homes by deciding what belongs inside them. Perhaps we should occasionally do the same with our social media spaces.
That does not mean everyone who irritates us must be shown the door. Social media platforms usually provide quieter choices. We can unfollow someone without ending the connection. We can mute a page, hide certain posts or simply continue scrolling.
Not every disagreement requires a courtroom, a family feud or a public announcement beginning with the words, “I am cleaning up my friends list.”
Sometimes the healthiest response is simply to stop giving someone our attention.
Steve and I did not establish a complicated set of rules. We did not begin working down the alphabet, judging every person from childhood onward. Instead, we came back to something much simpler.
We can remain connected to people who disagree with us. We can even learn from them. But we do not have to provide an audience for cruelty, hatred or the deliberate humiliation of others.
Friendship should leave room for differences. It should not require us to surrender our peace, compromise our values or remain silent while others are treated as less than human.
So, who should remain on the friends list?
Perhaps the people who remind us that there is still room in this world for conversation, laughter, kindness and the occasional disagreement over watermelon.
As for oxygen, Steve and I remain firmly in favor of it.
Since it is the first week of fall, we are doing a little seasonal cleaning around here—dusting off a few stories that deserve another moment in the light. You will notice as you read this weeks stories there will be a few cleaning tips sprinkled about as you read. ;-)
Have another cup of coffee—and please, continue breathing.
—— Who should remain on our social media friends list? The people who disagree with us—or only those who know how to disagree without becoming cruel? This Morning Coffee considers friendship, boundaries, watermelons and why Ben and Steve remain firmly in favor of oxygen.
Today’s Morning Coffee begins a little differently. Before we turn to a more serious story about the Kennedy Center and America’s history, we’ll first share a few surprising facts, a little humor, and a reminder that coffee and conversations about the country have gone together for generations.
Normally, this would be where I pour the coffee, settle into the chair, and leave you with something simple to carry into the weekend.
Today is a little different.
Following this morning’s coffee, you will find a story that is considerably more serious. It concerns the Kennedy Center, the memory of President John F. Kennedy, and some of the larger questions I believe America is facing about history, institutions and what we choose to preserve for future generations.
I apologize for handing you something so heavy before you have finished your first cup.
But sometimes Morning Coffee is not only about making the morning easier. Sometimes it is about sitting together long enough to talk about something that matters.
So read the story that follows when you are ready.
Before we get there, however, I thought we should end the week with a few things that might make you say, “Well, I didn’t know that.”
Things You May Not Know
The Library of Congress receives roughly 15,000 items every working day and adds more than 10,000 of them to its collections. Somewhere in Washington, somebody apparently has a much larger “to be filed” pile than the rest of us.
The smallest book in the Library of Congress is called Old King Cole. It measures only about 1/25 of an inch by 1/25 of an inch—roughly the size of the period at the end of a sentence. Meanwhile, its largest book is approximately five feet by seven feet. That is less a book and more something you could use to replace a bedroom wall.
The Library also possesses written material dating to about 2040 B.C. and printed Buddhist texts dating to approximately 770 A.D. It is humbling to realize that human beings were already writing things down thousands of years before somebody invented the phrase, “I forgot my password.”
And since this is Morning Coffee, here is one especially appropriate bit of history.
James Smithson—the British scientist whose fortune eventually created the Smithsonian Institution—actually published his own method for making coffee in 1823. So apparently even the man behind the Smithsonian had opinions about how a proper cup should be made.
Coffee itself has a rather patriotic chapter in American history. After the Boston Tea Party, drinking coffee increasingly became associated with rejecting British tea, and colonial coffeehouses became important gathering places where politics, news and revolutionary ideas were discussed.
Which means that sitting around drinking coffee and talking about the condition of the country is hardly something we invented.
Americans have apparently been doing it for centuries.
So take another sip.
Enjoy your Friday.
And when you are ready, the next story is a little more serious.
Sometimes history asks us to remember.
Sometimes it asks us to pay attention.
And occasionally, it asks us to do both before the coffee gets cold.
Have a great Friday from benandsteve.com — and may your weekend begin with something good.
It doesn’t always feel that way, of course. Monday has developed a reputation for being the day nobody particularly wants to see coming. The alarm seems louder, the bed feels more comfortable, and that first cup of coffee often carries considerably more responsibility than coffee should ever be expected to handle.
But perhaps Monday deserves another look.
Monday is another beginning.
Whatever went wrong last week has already happened. Whatever we didn’t finish is waiting for another attempt. The words we wish we had said differently cannot be pulled back, but the next words out of our mouths can be kinder.
Life gives us remarkably few opportunities to change yesterday.
It gives us countless opportunities to change today.
That is worth remembering as we sit with our coffee this morning.
Maybe you have been carrying something around that has become heavier than it needs to be. A disagreement. A disappointment. An unfinished task. Something you have been putting off because beginning it seems harder than continuing to avoid it.
Monday may be as good a day as any to set it down, straighten it out, or simply begin again.
You don’t have to repair your entire life before lunch.
Sometimes progress is nothing more dramatic than making the phone call, answering the message, washing the dishes, opening the curtains, or finally taking the first step toward something you have been thinking about for weeks.
Small beginnings still count.
We tend to celebrate the grand accomplishments because they are easy to see. But nearly every great accomplishment started somewhere very ordinary—with someone deciding, on an otherwise unremarkable morning, that today they would try.
Perhaps that is Monday’s real gift.
It arrives whether we are ready for it or not and quietly places another blank page in front of us.
So pour the coffee.
Take your time with the first few sips.
Then decide what deserves another chance today.
It might be a project.
It might be a relationship.
It might simply be you.
Whatever it is, remember this: starting over does not mean you failed.
Sometimes it simply means you learned enough from yesterday to approach today differently.
And that sounds like a pretty good reason to raise the coffee cup.
Have a wonderful Monday, and make something good out of the day in front of you.
Every morning gives us another opportunity to decide what we will carry into the day. We may not control everything that happens, but we can still choose kindness, patience and the small acts that make an ordinary day a little better.
The house may still be quiet. The day may not have completely decided what it intends to become. For a few minutes, there is only the warmth of the cup in our hands and the opportunity to decide what we are going to carry with us into the hours ahead.
And we do carry things.
We carry yesterday’s disappointments. We carry conversations we wish had gone differently. We carry worries about tomorrow, people we love, bills that need paying, decisions that need making, and questions for which we still have no answers.
But we also carry something else.
We carry kindness.
We carry the memory of someone who once helped us when they didn’t have to. We carry the laughter of people who have shared our table. We carry lessons taught to us by parents, grandparents, friends and sometimes complete strangers who crossed our path only briefly.
Perhaps one of the greatest choices we make every morning is deciding which of those things deserves the most room.
There will always be something to worry about. There will always be someone determined to spoil a perfectly good day. And there will always be circumstances beyond our control.
But we still get to decide what we contribute.
A wooden park sign shares a heartfelt reminder to treat others with kindness.
A kind word costs very little.
Holding a door takes only a moment.
Calling someone who has been on your mind might change their entire afternoon.
And sometimes simply listening to another person without trying to correct them, hurry them or outdo their story is one of the finest gifts we can give.
None of these things will make the evening news.
There won’t be a parade.
Nobody is likely to hand us a trophy for being decent to another human being.
But those small acts have a way of traveling farther than we ever realize.
So this morning, while the coffee is still warm, perhaps we can leave a little room in the day for something good.
We don’t have to change the whole world before lunchtime.
Changing one person’s moment might be enough.
And sometimes, without ever knowing it, that person may be us.
Have a great day from benandsteve.com — and may your coffee be warm, your worries be light, and the kindness you send into the world find its way back home.
Be kind to others, it is really the right thing to do.
Some of life’s most meaningful moments do not announce themselves when they arrive. They are found in familiar voices, quiet mornings, ordinary routines, and the people beside us. Sometimes the moments we barely notice today become the memories we treasure most tomorrow.
Maybe it is the light coming through the window. Maybe it is a memory that wandered in before we were fully awake. Or maybe it is simply one of those days when we notice the little things we usually hurry past.
We spend so much of our lives looking ahead that we sometimes forget how much of life is actually built from ordinary moments. The grand occasions certainly matter, but they are surprisingly few. Most of our lives are made up of thousands of small mornings, simple conversations, familiar faces, and routines we rarely think twice about.
Until one day we miss them.
That is when we discover that ordinary never really meant unimportant.
Some of the things I remember most clearly from years gone by would have seemed completely insignificant at the time. A voice from another room. Someone sitting at the kitchen table. A familiar laugh. A car pulling into the driveway. Someone saying, “Come on, let’s go.”
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing anyone would have thought needed preserving.
Yet somehow those are the moments that remain.
Maybe that is something worth remembering this morning.
There may be something happening around you today that feels completely ordinary. You may not photograph it. You may never write about it. You probably will not even recognize its importance while it is happening.
But someday, it may become one of the moments you would give almost anything to experience once more.
Before the phone rings, the messages arrive, and the day begins asking things of us, there is a little quiet time to simply be. Sometimes the most ordinary parts of morning—the coffee, the familiar sounds of home, and a few peaceful minutes—are the moments worth noticing most.
Before the list of things we meant to do yesterday quietly becomes today’s list.
There is coffee.
And sometimes, that is enough.
I have come to appreciate those first few moments of the morning. The house is still finding its footing. The outside world hasn’t completely awakened yet, and for a little while, nobody expects anything from you.
You can simply sit.
Think.
Remember.
Or, if you are lucky, think about absolutely nothing at all.
That may be harder than it sounds.
We spend so much of our lives preparing for what comes next that we sometimes miss what is sitting directly in front of us.
We carry more into each morning than the coffee in our cup. Memories, worries, laughter, and yesterday’s unfinished thoughts often come along with us. But a new morning gives us another chance to decide what is worth carrying forward—and what might finally be time to leave behind.
But sometimes what we bring with us to the table gives it a little more weight.
Not the cup, of course. The cup weighs exactly what it did yesterday.
We carry yesterday into the morning.
A conversation we wish had gone differently. A worry we never quite put down before going to bed. A name we have been thinking about. A memory that wandered in without knocking and decided to stay awhile.
Then there are the things we carry that feel a little lighter.
A laugh from yesterday.
Someone checking in just because they were thinking about us.
A dog stretched out nearby, perfectly content with life as long as breakfast eventually appears.
A familiar chair.
A quiet house.
And that first dependable cup of coffee.
Maybe mornings aren’t really about starting over. Life doesn’t erase itself while we sleep. The bills are still there. The problems haven’t packed their bags and moved out during the night. That stubborn thing we were worrying about yesterday may still be sitting right where we left it.
But morning does give us another chance to decide how much of it we are going to carry.
Some things need our attention.
Some things need our patience.
And some things probably need to be left sitting beside the road somewhere behind us.
We are not required to drag every disappointment we have ever known into every new day.
That may be one of life’s quieter lessons.
We can remember without remaining stuck.
We can care without carrying everything.
We can miss someone and still smile.
We can have difficult days and still believe there are good ones ahead.
So this morning, while the coffee is still warm, take inventory of what you brought to the table.
Keep the memories that make you smile.
Hold close the people who matter.
Take care of the things that truly need tending.
And perhaps leave a little room in your hands for something new.
Because you never know what this day may be waiting to give you.
Sometimes all we need is enough room to receive it.
Have a great day from benandsteve.com — and may your coffee be warm, your burdens a little lighter, and your day give you something worth carrying into tomorrow.
You don’t have to solve everything before the coffee cools. Some mornings are simply meant for taking life one task, one conversation, and one cup at a time.
There are mornings when the coffee seems to understand us better than we understand ourselves.
We sit down with a warm cup in our hands and a list already forming in our minds.
Things we need to do.
Things we should have done yesterday.
Things we are worried about tomorrow.
And before we have even taken the first good sip, we have managed to turn an ordinary morning into a meeting with every problem we have ever known.
I have learned something about mornings, though.
They were never meant to carry the weight of an entire lifetime.
Sometimes the best thing we can do is simply take care of what is directly in front of us.
Drink the coffee.
Feed the dog.
Answer the message.
Make the bed.
Call the person we have been meaning to call.
Step outside for a minute and notice that the sun came up again without asking us to supervise it.
There is a strange comfort in remembering that not everything requires our immediate attention.
Some problems need time.
Some answers haven’t arrived yet.
Some doors will open when they are ready.
And some things that feel terribly important this morning may not matter nearly as much by Friday.
We have a habit of wanting everything settled.
We want the question answered, the disagreement resolved, the bill paid, the project finished, the decision made and tomorrow neatly arranged before breakfast.
Life rarely cooperates.
It arrives one day at a time.
Maybe there is wisdom in learning to live the same way.
One day.
One conversation.
One responsibility.
One cup of coffee at a time.
There will always be unfinished business somewhere in our lives. There will always be something we wish we could change, something we are waiting for, and something we don’t completely understand.
That doesn’t mean today cannot still be a good day.
A good day doesn’t require a perfect life.
Sometimes a good day is simply one where we laughed once, helped somebody, accomplished one useful thing, ate something we enjoyed and made it home safely.
That may not sound extraordinary.
But after enough years have passed, we begin to understand that those ordinary days were the extraordinary ones.
So this morning, don’t demand too much from yourself before the coffee has even cooled.
You don’t have to solve everything today.
Just take care of today.
Tomorrow will bring its own cup.
Have a wonderful morning. May your coffee be warm, your worries be light, and may you find something good waiting for you somewhere along the way
The world may be ready to rush us into the day, but mornings deserve a gentler beginning. Sometimes the best way to prepare for everything ahead is to slow down, enjoy the coffee, and simply notice the quiet moments before the day begins.
The coffee is poured, the day is waiting, and somewhere out there the world has already decided we should be in a hurry.
There is always something waiting for us.
A message that needs answering.
A chore that needs finishing.
A place we are supposed to be.
A problem we have convinced ourselves must be solved before breakfast.
We spend so much of our lives rushing toward the next thing that sometimes we forget to notice the thing we are standing in.
This morning.
This cup of coffee.
This moment.
I think mornings were meant to be entered gently.
Not attacked.
Not conquered.
Not treated like the starting gun at a race.
There is something about those first quiet minutes of the day that belongs only to us.
Before the telephone rings.
Before the television begins telling us what went wrong overnight.
Before somebody somewhere needs something from us.
There is that little pocket of time when the house is still quiet and the coffee is warm, when we can sit for a moment and remember that simply being here is enough.
I have noticed through the years that some of the best mornings are the ones when absolutely nothing happens.
No emergency.
No unexpected visitor.
No major announcement.
Just the familiar sounds of life beginning again.
Maybe a dog stretching nearby.
A refrigerator humming in the kitchen.
A bird announcing itself outside the window.
The soft clink of a spoon against a coffee cup.
Things so ordinary we hardly notice them.
Yet those are often the sounds we miss most when life changes.
We are always being told to make every minute count.
But perhaps every minute does not need to accomplish something.
Some minutes are allowed to simply exist.
Some are meant for sitting quietly.
Some are meant for remembering.
Some are meant for staring out the window while holding a warm cup between your hands and thinking absolutely nothing important at all.
There is value in that too.
Life will begin asking things from you soon enough.
The day will pick up speed.
There will be appointments, responsibilities, decisions and probably at least one thing that does not go according to plan.
But none of that has arrived yet.
Right now, it is morning.
And for these few minutes, you are allowed to simply be here.
So drink your coffee before it gets cold.
Watch the morning arrive.
Let the world wait just a little while.
Because sometimes the best way to prepare yourself for everything waiting ahead is to begin the day without rushing toward any of it.
Have a great day from benandsteve.com, and remember—
You do not have to race through every moment. Some of the best parts of life are found when we slow down long enough to notice them
Sometimes the best thing a morning can bring is absolutely nothing extraordinary. An ordinary Tuesday, a familiar chair, a dog underfoot, and a warm cup of coffee can remind us that the everyday moments are often the ones holding our lives together.
It doesn’t arrive with a marching band. There are usually no balloons tied to the mailbox, nobody sends you a card congratulating you for making it, and unless you’ve made special plans, Tuesday doesn’t expect very much from you.
It simply shows up.
And sometimes, that is exactly what we need.
This morning, the coffee pot doesn’t know where I’ve been. It doesn’t care how many miles I’ve traveled, what happened yesterday, or what might be waiting tomorrow.
Its job is remarkably simple.
Make coffee.
I appreciate that kind of dependability.
There are times in our lives when everything seems important. Every telephone call matters. Every appointment has to be remembered. Every mile has a destination, and every day on the calendar has something written beside it.
Then eventually, along comes an ordinary morning.
You wake up.
You shuffle toward the kitchen.
You put on the coffee.
Maybe the dog looks at you as though breakfast is already fifteen minutes late.
You look out the window and discover that the world managed to keep turning while you were asleep.
And suddenly the biggest decision facing you might be whether you want another cup.
Those ordinary mornings don’t receive enough credit.
We spend so much of our lives waiting for the big things—the vacation, the birthday, the reunion, the promotion, the holiday, the celebration—that we sometimes overlook the hundreds of perfectly ordinary days holding everything together.
But those are the days where most of life actually happens.
Tuesday morning coffee.
A familiar chair.
A dog underfoot.
Someone you love somewhere nearby.
A little sunlight coming through the window.
Nothing remarkable enough to make the evening news, but everything important enough to make a life.
Maybe that’s why I’ve grown to appreciate ordinary things so much.
They don’t demand anything from us.
They simply remind us that we’re still here.
There are chores to do today. There will probably be something that doesn’t go according to plan. Somebody somewhere will irritate us. Something will make us laugh. We’ll forget why we walked into a room at least once, and we’ll probably remember something important five minutes after we should have remembered it.
In other words, it should be a perfectly normal day.
And this morning, that sounds pretty good to me.
So here’s to Tuesday.
Here’s to the coffee pot doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Here’s to familiar faces, ordinary conversations, dogs who believe every day should revolve around them, and all those little moments we rarely recognize as blessings until someday we miss them.
You don’t need something extraordinary to happen today for today to matter.
Sometimes the ordinary day is the gift.
Pour yourself another cup.
Tuesday has arrived.
And that’s news enough for this morning.
Until tomorrow, may your coffee stay warm, your memories stay close, and your hope stay strong. The coffee will be waiting again tomorrow, and I hope you’ll be here to share it with me.
— Benjamin Groff II Morning Coffee at benandsteve.com
Not every road we travel is one we planned to take. Sometimes the detour introduces us to people, places, and possibilities we would have otherwise missed. Grab your coffee—we’re taking the scenic route this morning.
We know where we need to be, what needs to get done, and perhaps even what time we hope to have everything finished.
Then life puts up a detour sign.
Something changes.
A telephone call comes. Someone needs us. The car won’t start. The appointment runs late. A plan we were counting on falls apart. Suddenly, the road we expected to travel is closed, and we are headed somewhere we never intended to go.
I have traveled enough country roads in my life to know that detours can be frustrating.
But I have also discovered something else about them.
Sometimes the road you didn’t intend to travel shows you something you would never have seen otherwise.
You notice an old farmhouse sitting beneath a grove of trees. You cross a creek you didn’t know existed. You find a little town you have never visited. Maybe you meet someone you would never have met had everything gone according to plan.
Life works much the same way.
Some of the people who become important to us arrive because something else didn’t work out. Some of our greatest opportunities begin with disappointment. Some of the stories we eventually treasure started on days when we thought everything was going wrong.
That doesn’t mean every detour is pleasant.
Some are difficult. Some hurt. Some take us a long way from where we thought we would be.
But getting somewhere differently doesn’t always mean we are lost.
So, as you have your coffee this morning, perhaps there is something in your life that hasn’t gone according to plan.
You may be staring at a detour sign right now, wondering why the road ahead had to change.
Give it a little time.
Keep going.
Look out the window along the way.
There may be something waiting on this road that you could never have found on the one you originally planned to travel.
Sometimes the unexpected road becomes the one that takes us exactly where we needed to go.
Pour yourself another cup.
We’ve still got some traveling to do.
Until tomorrow, may your coffee stay warm, your memories stay close, and your hope stay strong. The coffee will be waiting again tomorrow, and I hope you’ll be here to share it with me.
— Benjamin Groff II Morning Coffee at benandsteve.com
