chasing answers newsletter #30

Is coffee the new alcohol?, ChildFund

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” - Maya Angelou

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Happy Sunday!

Christmas is getting closer, and we made it through this entire week with no shattered ornaments. Buttercup is losing the battle as the count remains at four.

Toffee Candy Snowflake continues to raise hell throughout the house.

And I’m scurrying around at work, trying to get ahead so I can hopefully take the entire week off between Christmas and New Year's. Fingers crossed!

Toffee Candy Snowflake decided to wrestle with a tape gun in my office and lost

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Is Coffee the New Alcohol?

I need someone much younger than me to chime in and tell me what the hell is going on here.

I’m not much of a drinker……….anymore. But when I was a teenager and throughout college and my 20s, I drank enough to last for the rest of my life. And probably a few other lives as well. 

I have a nephew who is a senior in high school right now, and according to him, neither he nor his friends really drink, which is great. I just find it odd. And what I find even more bizarre is how much fucking coffee these kids drink. Every time I see them, they have a coffee in their hand. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. 

For the longest time, I just thought this group of kids had something wrong with them. But last night, we took a trip to the Columbus Zoo (yes, I had to shower when I got home to wash the gross off - Go Blue!) to enjoy the Christmas light display, which is excellent. 

Halfway through the night, my daughter and nephews wanted hot chocolate. So I found a little coffee shop in the zoo and got in line. It wasn’t just the length of the line people were willing to wait in to get $8 coffee that surprised me. It was the age of those in line. I was literally one of the oldest people there. Dozens of kids that could not have been older than twenty were waiting to get coffee. 

This is even harder for me to grasp because, at forty-four, I’ve yet to drink a cup of coffee. I can’t even stand the smell of it. I’ve tried it. And every once in a while, my wife will convince me to taste some new blend she has discovered that she is sure I will love, but I’ve never actually drank an entire cup.

So I’m amazed that all these seven-teen and eight-teen-year-old kids find it satisfying. And on top of that, why in the hell do eight-teen-year-olds need coffee in the first place? Don’t most people drink coffee to wake up/stay awake and have more energy? These kids should have all the energy in the world.

I’ve heard statistics floating around the last couple of years about the decline in teen drinking, but are there coffee-drinking statistics out there that are inversely correlated? I need help understanding this, so if anyone has a hot take on this, please reach out.

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ChildFund

If you read last week's newsletter, you know I will be highlighting some charities that focus on helping children in need this holiday season.

This week's non-profit is ChildFund.

As stated on their website, “ChildFund is a global community of people who care about children and take action to help them live at their fullest potential at every stage of their lives.”

Their vision is “A world where every child realizes their rights and achieves their potential.”

Made up of parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, doctors, artists, social workers, and advocates from around the world, ChildFund connects people, institutions, and resources from around the world to help children in 24 countries.

The work ChildFund is involved with is diverse and varies depending on the age of the children in need. From providing clean water to healthcare and nutrition to education, they focus on helping children in every stage of their development. 

There are multiple ways to donate, including one-time and recurring monthly donations. You can also choose to sponsor an individual child, which is done through monthly contributions. 

If you decide to sponsor an individual child, please note that not all of the funds will go directly to that child. It will be pooled with other funds donated to help children in the same community, and then the funds will be used in that community as deemed necessary. ChildFund makes this clear on its website; you can read more about it here.

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Best of Twitter

Recently

Karena de Souza

wrote about the concept of history as an example of compression. 

It got me thinking about an ongoing debate I have with a good friend of mine. He constantly argues that the events in our lifetime have been more impactful and are responsible for more remarkable changes than those of the past.

My counter has always been that it only seems that way because we don’t know the details of those past events. We get a summarization of it in a textbook or an article, or maybe if it was a significant event, a two-hour movie starring Tom Hanks or Leonardo Decaprio. 

But we can’t feel the impact those events of the past had on people’s lives at the time. We don’t know how everyday lives were changing and transitioning as the events unfolded. 

When I came across this tweet, it further amplified those thoughts.

We’ve all heard of the Titanic, but for many, if not all of us, it is some far-off event that exists in history books and movies. The first thing that comes to mind when many of us hear Titanic is most likely the love story between Leonardo Decaprio and Kate Winslet. It’s difficult to imagine it being an actual event.

But listening to this gentleman describe that night as someone who lived through it is incredible. It makes me wonder how our perception of events in the past would change if we could hear about them directly from those who lived them.

Michael Warburton @MichaelWarbur17

It’s 1979 and Assistant Purser on the TITANIC - Frank Prentice - describes what happened that fateful night when more than 1,500 poor souls lost their lives. Extraordinary.

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I hope you all have a great week!

As always, I would love to hear from you.

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If you want to see more of my work, visit chasinganswers.co.

Thank you for reading, and if you liked what you read, please share.

randy