Miracle at Starbucks
Walking Across a Parking Lot and Seeing the Light
If you like what you are about to read, please consider a small token of appreciation; a tip or paid subscription would be so generous. Thank you! 🙏
The Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh said that the miracle is not walking on water but walking on your own two feet. I’ve found this to be true in my life; the more I look for higher meaning, divine answers, elevated states, the less satisfied I am.
The Indigo Girls understand this well:
The less I seek my source for some definitive Closer I am to fine
At this very moment, having just locked my car and walking across the dusty Walgreens parking lot to get a coffee at the Starbucks next door, there is a miracle happening, one that I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t paying attention. The miracle is that my body is moving smoothly and quietly through the morning light, my legs propelling me forward with ease and without my conscious instruction. My lungs are breathing the air that encompasses and sustains me, while all of my senses are gauging, measuring, and assessing each step I take in order to get me safely and directly to my destination.
How miraculous that as I approach the coffee shop entrance, I don’t stumble on the curb that I barely register; my body traverses it like a bird ascending over a treetop. Then my hand reflexively reaches out, and my five fingers, all working together, grasp the steel door handle and pull the door open. My legs come into action again, deftly moving my body to one side as I hold the door to allow another caffeine-craving customer to enter ahead of me.
That’s the miracle: the light, my body, life, movement. And all I have to do to see it is to look, to pay attention. I don’t have to go to a temple, I don’t have to meditate, I don’t have to read a big book or listen to a sermon or a Dharma talk. I don’t even have to go to a special beautiful place like the beach or the mountains. The miracle is right here in this parking lot where I walk, this parking lot with its dry brown leaves and scraps of dirty paper, its discarded cigarette butts and weeds growing in the cracks. The light of the early sun illuminates all equally; the parked and moving cars, the hurried patrons, the litter, the green-trimmed building. The miracle is right here where I am now, in this very moment, even as I view this parking lot as only something to pass over to get to where I want to be.
And the miracle follows me inside as the door closes softly.
I actually wrote the above lines after I got my coffee and sat down in the cool air of the café. I didn’t have my laptop so I dictated the words softly into the Notes app on my phone. It was pretty busy in Starbucks, lots of chatter, so I didn’t have to worry too much about disturbing anyone.
Because I’m currently self-unemployed (by choice) I wasn’t actually in a hurry to get anywhere beyond the coffee counter. I drink decaf at home so I was definitely craving the caffeine. I relaxed and enjoyed my coffee for a half hour or so.
Then I recrossed the parking lot, got into my pickup, turned the key, and... nothing.
Damn.
I just had the transmission replaced two weeks ago. It cost me forty-two-hundred dollars! Now this. There is plenty of juice in the battery; it must be the starter.
I kept my cool, though, because after I called for road service (so glad I paid the AAA bill!), I sat on the curb in the shade of Walgreens and started fantasizing about selling my twelve-year-old truck and pursuing a fossil-fuel-free lifestyle. Maybe go live in a straw-bale house in northern New Mexico. I can’t actually do that because I fix houses for a living and I have a trailer full of tools that needs towing, but I still enjoyed the fantasy.
I watched the driver load my truck onto a flat-bed car carrier, then began the two-and-a-half-mile walk home. My knees have been troubling me and I wasn’t even wearing my good Brooks sneakers. But I just walked slowly, looked around. It was noon by the time I got to Main Street so I stopped at the bagel shop for an egg sandwich. I had a book with me, so that was pleasant.
And then I was walking through my neighborhood, almost home. Hyannis is about as suburban as Cape Cod can get, but there are still plenty of trees on both sides of the road leading to my house, even a couple of patches of undeveloped woodland. I was thinking about time as I walked. How the only time that actually exists is this bit right here; now. We think of the future almost as a separate entity that exists... well, in the future. But there is no such entity and there is no such thing as the future. That’s just a concept the mind constructs so it can plan for present moments that haven’t arrived yet. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We want to be sure we don’t get caught up short, unprepared financially or emotionally for the myriad things that can go wrong (or right).
But how often do we—I, actually—live in this present moment, focused on the actual, the here and now? Here are the tree branches stretching broadly over the narrow road, almost forming a woven green tunnel for me to walk through. In the upper branches a couple of crows caw and click and complain. Below, the leafy grass growing alongside the road looks rather similar to bamboo. Could it be some invasive variety?... hmm. I notice the air smells different outside of the town center; richer, fresher. And how quiet this space around me actually is, even when an airplane flies overhead, approaching our busy little airport, or a car whizzes by, barely slowing for me. Those are just sounds that exist within this quiet vacuum of space that contains me and the road, the houses, the trees...
I know my truck is kaput once again, that I’m running out of money to keep fixing it. But right now, at this very moment, absolutely nothing is wrong. I’m walking, I’m healthy, the air is cool in the shade. The sky is blue. There is nothing I can do, so I do nothing, beyond putting one foot in front of the other. Later, when I get my truck back and pay for the repair with money that I was planning to use to go on vacation with my wife, still nothing will be wrong, because I’ll breath the same air, walk on the same legs, take my energy from the sun, work on solving any problems that need solving. Things will be pretty much as they are now. When that time, that future, is now, I will still have the option of paying attention to the present moment, and that, I have found, is the practice that puts me in a good place, where things just feel right.
So, maybe we’ll spend a long weekend in Maine instead of a week in the Caribbean. That’s okay; I bet we’ll still have a great time.
I just hope they have a Starbucks.
BOOKS MENTIONED
Thich Nhat Hanh. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Beacon Press, 1999
Great news! If you purchase any book mentioned in a Shy Guy Meets the Buddha post by clicking through the link, I will earn a small commission and YOU will be helping keep this publication available to everyone (and also helping independent book stores everywhere). Thank you for your continued support. 🙏
Thank you for reading Shy Guy Meets the Buddha: Reflections on Work, Love, and Nature. If you enjoy these mindfulness-themed biographical essays and would like to show your support, please consider becoming a supporting member for only $5 a month.
Alternatively, a one-time donation will help me continue the hard work behind these creative efforts; “Buy me a coffee” here or by clicking the button below. And don’t forget to like and share; Please take a few moments to show you care. Thank you! 💚
Love it, Don. Completely agree that the everyday miracle of our existence and fundamental human activity is often overlooked. Our nervous systems, and perhaps our egos, are primed to only look for what's new and what's pleasurable, and it's easy to miss how wild it is that we exist at all, and can breathe and perceive.
So sorry to hear about your car. I'm glad you're able to take it in stride instead of beating yourself up about it, as if that will help. On our recent trip, we forgot our food bag in the airport parking lot (surprisingly some of it was salvageable two weeks later!), and then on our way home, I forgot my son's changing pad in the airport restroom. I am learning to just accept such things, though my ingrained first reaction is still to beat myself up, as if piling on more pain and suffering now will somehow prepare me better for the future. It won't; it's just paying a needless cost in regret.
I love how you noticed your environment on your walk home, despite the circumstances. It's so easy to get all wrapped up in our human machinations like money and cars and plans, and so many of us spend almost all of our attention in such places. What a gift you have (and help bestow onto your readers!) to just stop and actually BE where you are. If you can't enjoy the present, you won't enjoy the future you think you're planning for. I am working on reprogramming myself to do this more often. But really what I want to do is just exist without any concepts at all sometimes, even without the concept of self-improvement.
Your piece brought up a question (yes yes...it's unanswerable, but I promise it's not one of the super cliché ones!): how long is 'now'? In video, we have frames, which are still images, and they are shown one after another at some rate, which simulates true motion to our eyes. But forget video: in actual experience, how long is now? Surely it's not just a frame where everything is completely still. We can't even imagine feeling—let alone thinking—unless things are in motion. I think the answer is (perhaps this is some God speaking): "The length of now is—ahem!—.....drum roll please....the length of now is: your silly words and concepts like 'now' have no bearing here. There was no problem until you created it with your question. 'Now' is just another concept! Now begone, human, and go sit by a babbling brook."
Now I have to go listen to "How Soon is Now?" by The Smiths.
reminds me of the new arrival at the monesterry who asks the abbot what he needs to do to get enlightened. abbot: have you had your rice? new arrival: yes. abbot: wash your dish.