I don’t know if it is coincidence or just plain art imitating life. Somehow I always find the right book to read at a particular point in my life. Now that I am in an unforgiving crossroad, I perused to read a book that an officemate pressured me to read (howdy, P!). How she knew that book would strike a chord in me remains fathomable. Of late, I have been drifting in my pristine sea of cynicism, and this book surprisingly made sense.
The book is called How Starbucks Saved My Life, an autobiographical novel by Michael Gates Gill. Mike talks about how he had it all: an enviable career, a passport to the higher echelons of society, a 7th Heaven-ish family life...practically the world at the palm of his hand. And then his human foibles got the better of him and he lost it all. He was fired, he got broke, his marriage dissolved and he needed a brain operation.
Forced to pick up the pieces of his shattered life, he was given an opportunity to work as a barista in Starbucks. Working on other side of the corporate fence gave him a new lease on life; a newfound respect for himself and the people around him. Consciously, he embraced the happiness that he never found in his previous life, despite having it all.
Gates’ story is an ordinary story of redemption but somehow it reads like a slap in the face for those people who are slaves of their job and their lifestyles. I am one of them.
Do not get me wrong. This book is not your Sunday service sermon but more of an eye opener and a reality check. Mike dishes the painful truth that we become ruled by our past and the what-might-have-beens, that we miss out on the beauty of the NOW. Then he gives us the way out: that this is something we CHOOSE to be. We always have the power to let go, learn, move on and actually... LIVE.
Mike also shows us how to look at the issues and non-issues. And life’s incorrigible irony that we often lose the things we take for granted, or realize their worth much too late. Maybe some of us will not have the chance, like Mike, to rediscover it all again.
Here are my choice lines from this book.
- Let go of the sadness, give up the fight. Follow your madness and take flight.
- More of the future, less of the past
- Will yourself to have a child’s positive attitude: HI and BYE are equally exciting.
- You only need a few friends who understand you and remain your friend.
- It is a gift to be able to take all that happened to you in such a lighthearted spirit, a genuine sense of humor about a mixed-up world.
- They told you that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. What they failed to tell you is what you look like isn’t important. What is important is who you are inside and the choices you are making in your life.
In this world that is defined by inclusive hatred and competitive anger; and where we communicate through damage, Mike’s story offers a method to the madness and a proof that we can rise above any adversary. His turnaround is nothing legendary or beyond the scope of the everyday man. It was as simple as getting over your spilt Venti Caramel Macchiato and discovering happiness in a Short Skim Latte.