An ancient Greek philosopher named Heraclitus centuries ago observed, perhaps on a blustery day, that change is the only constant.
To prove the Greek thinker right, a few decades ago, to confirm Heraclitus as the author of the famous observation on change, I would have gone to a library or consulted an encyclopedia.
But because things change all I had to do this morning to accomplish that research goal was Google the quote on my smartphone, which promptly offered all the information I needed on ancient Heraclitus.
Not being Nostradamus, Heraclitus would, I imagine, have been hard-pressed to understand such a thing as a smartphone while strolling around making observations on blustery days in Greece.
While change is inevitable for everyone, and not just long-gone philosophers, knowing that established fact doesn’t necessarily make change easy to embrace.
And so it has been with some degree of discomfort I’ve found myself adjusting over the past couple of months to a major change in the way we make coffee in our kitchen.
We bought a Keurig.
The single-serving coffee maker, introduced (according to my smartphone) 20 years ago but really growing in popularity in more recent years, is a nice innovation to the range of coffee-making techniques – drip, percolated, pressed, instant – already widely available.
I don’t dislike the Keurig. I like that it brews one cup, cutting down on waste.
But it’s taken me a bit of time to get used to the new way.
No longer do I brew a pot of coffee and leisurely return to it two or three times in a morning to refresh my cup.
Now, being a single-serving coffee household, I feel guilty and wasteful, not to mention overly indulgent, brewing a third cup of coffee.
So the amount of coffee I’m consuming these days – and I’ve been drinking coffee since my teens – has seen a decline. That probably isn’t a bad thing.
Perhaps the biggest adjustment I’ve had to make since we introduced a Keurig to our countertop is on the recycling side.
For years, I’ve supplemented our compost bin with used coffee grounds and filters and I prided myself on the wholesome, rich fertilizer that resulted.
But Keurigs, as wonderful and convenient and modern as they are in some ways, aren’t made with the composter in mind.
In fact, they appear to me to be a recycler’s nightmare, with their single-serve plastic K-pods.
Those boxes of K-pods, by the way, aren’t cheap, so I feel as if our coffee budget has also changed since we began brewing our coffee in this most 21st century way.
Some day, using a Keurig and accepting its pros and its cons, may be second nature to me. But today, finding myself still in a period of adjustment to this change in coffee-making, I remain a bit circumspect.
I still haven’t thrown out our old coffee-maker.
The old unit now sits unused atop a shelf in a corner or our kitchen, gathering dust.
I don’t know that we’ll ever use it again, but sending my old friend to the landfill is one change I’m not ready for yet.