New Light

I just saw something in a new light, and it made me change my mind about something important.

I was making coffee, and I poured the creamer into the cup first. This is because I can more easily see and control the color of the contents of the cup (I’m also using a clear glass mug) as the coffee is being poured and can therefore watch the perfect coffee-to-cream ratio emerge and stop pouring at just the right time. The perfect color is high art in my life, of course, and I can usually pretty much nail the exact deep caramel color. Squarely between gingerbread and walnut. You know you’ll get the essence of the good coffee taste here in ‘the strike zone’―as they say with reverence in certain hushed circles. Although the creamer is here also and has a little something to say, it knows its place.

So, this morning. I stopped the pour and said “close enough”. It was just a hair under dark enough. I know that seems heretical, my seeming acceptance of substandard color after my fabulous setup of the issue―but there are other calculations at work. The glass was almost full, and, more importantly, the color was close enough to the target color that an adjustment process of adding coffee and/or cream, sometimes back and forth, felt like an unnecessary leveling-up of risk given the totality of the circumstances. This is known in the business as the ‘adjustment-failure rate’, and sometimes one must make some hard choices in order to not court disaster. So, I carefully shepherded the quite-full mug to the couch to open my laptop upon which I’m writing this now.

I could suddenly see that I’d been wrong, that the shade of caramel was indeed too light, and light enough to be beyond the point where I should have taken the risk and added more coffee at the counter when I was pouring.

In retrospect, the kitchen counter area is opposite where the sun comes up and the couch is on the side where the sun is now coming through the windows. This early in the morning, the coffee making area is bathed in soft shadow. On the couch is a more clear early morning light. By late afternoon, this will have reversed. (By the way, it’s not that I live in a giant house. I love my place, but it could best be categorized, size-wise, as a medium to high-end ice-fishing hut.)

Now that I see the light, do I get up after I’m settled into my position to add more coffee to get the right color? Not as simple as you think. I’d have to admit that I was wrong. I’d have to admit that new facts came to light, and that those facts are uncontroverted. And that those facts ought to make any reasonable person think differently. I mean―I see what I see, right?

So, yeah. I made the adjustment.

And nothing disastrous happened.

It’s all been quite humbling, frankly.

But I feel like I’m a better man for it.

After a couple of sips. Pre-adjustment. (P.S.: vote.)