Starbucks: Where it all began

By: Edward Viljoen on Thursday, July 12, 2012

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I'm sitting in the Starbucks store on 1st and Pike in Seattle, just around the corner from the original Starbucks where it all began. The first store has a line going right out the building onto the sidewalk. It's a coffee pilgrims' destination and apparently they come from all over the world to pay tribute to the starting place. I stood in the darker shop, darker than the everywhere-present bright and cheerful Starbucks that are the same from Hong Kong to Ubud. This first shop has cardboard boxes stacked along walls in a half-hearted effort to conjure up the atmosphere of, I'm guessing, the first days. People are speaking Spanish, and German and snapping photos and looking over each others shoulders to get a glance at what?

What is so fascinating about it? And why did I make sure it was on my own agenda to stop in at the Starbucks Mecca? What is everybody hoping for?

The sign above the register says that this is where is all began and there is some magic in that
statement. Maybe we think some of that magic will linger with us after our visit? Maybe seeing the plain and modest first place will inspire us to believe again in dreams we've let languish?

This week I heard a speaker say that people are likely to be most like the aggregate personality and attitude of the five significant people who they keep company with. I did a little inventory of the folk I spend a lot of time with, focusing on the five I spend the most time with and I can see how a little bit of them lingers with me and shows up in my decisions and attitude. The exercise made me think about purposefully spending time with people who have the energy and attitude that I aspire to, at least some of the time, because I'm not at all dissatisfied with the significant people in my life. I'm just seeing now how a little bit of everything lingers with me.

I'm sitting in the Starbucks around the corner from the place where it all began because the first store is so jammed full with people there is nowhere to sit and write. But I am going to go back, walk past, peer over people's shoulders at the sign again and let a little bit of the magic linger with me and encourage me to believe in impossible things again.