The Kindness of Coffee

Paying it backward

photograph by Nathan Dumlao

For years, whenever I’ve gone through a Starbucks drive-thru, I’ve picked up the tab of the car behind me. It’s a practice in random acts of kindness, a phrase I thought was cheesy until I started doing it.

My rules are simple:

One: I pay the check no matter the amount. This hasn’t gotten me into trouble so far — the biggest bill I’ve ever gotten was thirty bucks. Not nothing, but not something that’s going to put me in financial peril.

Two: Once I’m in line, I can’t change my mind based on who, exactly, turns out to be behind me. Admittedly, when I glance in the rearview mirror I sometimes get excited to see a sister (solidarity and mutual care-taking for the win), or an older couple (respect for elders never goes out of style), or what looks like a mom and a car full of kids (#momlife!). Those are my personal biases — but part of the point is to choose kindness regardless of who’s on the receiving end.

There’s a meditation in Buddhism called metta, where, at a certain point, you concentrate on wishing peace, contentment, safety, and joy (or similar states) to everyone in the world, including the people you don’t think particularly deserve it, the people you struggle with, the people who drive you up the wall. It is, at a minimum, an illuminating thought experiment — I…