Thinking Place

I am sitting at Concord Coffee, letting the atmosphere of a coffee shop fill my head and space. I am sitting up at the counter/bar, drinking a delicious peppermint latte. I don't usually sit up at the bar, but all the other tables were taken, and I do find that a new perspective is good to take sometimes. The coffee shop looks a bit different from up here. 

It reminds me to be open to seeing the same thing but with fresh eyes. Like discovering a place for the first time. To look upon a place of familiarity with a new sense of appreciation. The concrete counter top is smooth and spacious. I could spread out with a few more books, really. I can hear the conversions behind me, but cannot see the people unless I turn, so my imagination is at work picturing them in my head. The music playing is upbeat and unfamiliar. Other than the baristas, the people are all strangers to me.

This is an ideal situation for a thinking place. Here is where I find it easy to think think think. While being in the midst of people normally has the potential to be distracting, when I don't know the people and they are going on about their business with muffled conversations, writing notes, and tapping keys on their laptops, I am in community with them as other thinkers, writers, creators, students, business people doing life in their way. I find beauty in that.

I welcome the ambient atmosphere because it is not a distraction. It is a place where I am not distracted by my own things. I love being at home (and that's my other good thinking place) but it can be more distracting because I will see that I need to dust, so I'll get up to dust. Then, I'll remember I needed to change my water filter, so I will get up to do that. Then I will see the stack of things I left on the table, that I mean to go through and put away, so I will get up to do that. You see where this is going, and sometimes it gets the best of me as I get little things done here and there, my thoughts are going here and there, too. It's not always like that, but sometimes it is.

A coffee shop is where the comings and goings of daily life inspires me. I am a lifelong learner so I will read my book and underline with gusto as if I had a paper to write. That paper I write might just be a reflection in my journal. I will glance up and take a sip of coffee and wonder what the person next to me is writing about as they type away on their laptop. I love the environment of many brains thinking, postulating, and working in the same space about a wide range of topics (I can only imagine what each person is studying or discussing).

Where is your good thinking place?