An Unexpected Gem

Today I went to New Home Homebrew Store.

Homebrew stores (for the uninitiated, those stores that specialize in the supplies for the brewing of beer, wine, mead, sake, soda, and oftentimes anything else involving fermentation) are a unique brand of hobby/interest store. Many of the aspects of any interest or hobby store one would recognize: racks filled with small packages, unusual parts that have no meaning to anyone not in the know, tempting bits and pieces that make one think "I should have made a list - I think if I buy that and that I can make the new (fill in the blank alcohol) I've been thinking about" or "I should try that." The uniqueness: it is one of the few stores populated solely by adults.

The service personnel and clientele participate in that sort of bon homme reverie that is familiar to anyone involved in a hobby (which, sadly enough, seems to be absent from too many of our other interactions: everyone is cheery, friendly and joking; there are no foolish questions or beginner's trial period, only a sense of "Great! You want to do this - let's get started. What are you trying to do." I truly believe that part of the reason that people frequent stores like this so much is simply that they are so fun to be in.

I had secured my supplies - an airlock and rubber plug for my small neck carboy, a hygrometer (for measuring specific gravity/sugar content, therefore alcoholic content), ginger root (for ginger mead!), tartaric acid (for hard lemon candy - which I can never seem to harden enough; I need to work on my technique) and 5 packages of yeast to see me through the next few months.

My turn came. The store guy, a bluff older gentleman with a square face, work-hardened palms, and a body type that suggested he not only worked at a homebrew store, but he enjoyed the fruits that it put out as well, called my name off the list. He seemed a bit surprised - happily so - that I had already secured my supplies and was ready. I started pouring them into his hand. He responded with a "Bless you, my son" and we were off to the register.

At the register, he asked me "Is that all?"

"Sure" I replied. "If I get it all the first time, I won't have an excuse to come back.

He chuckled at that. "I know that" he said. "That's how they got to know me at the Big Box Home Improvement store, when I came in for the second time in the same day."

He stopped for a minute, and then out of the blue said "I can't understand why people who don't enjoy their jobs stay at them.

I stood there, suddenly taken breathless in the Zen-like simplicity of the moment. Here was a guy, working retail at a job that probably doesn't pay a great deal in money, shooting out a one-liner about everything I have been pondering in my soul for 15 years.

Why do we do this - in fact, why do we stay at anything for long periods of time when we don't enjoy it? Is it fear? Is it lack of initiative? Is it that we don't believe we can really do anything else? Or is it that we simply believe that there simply are no others options, that the fate we have made - the life we have made - we are too heavily invested in to change?

I got my change back in almost in a trance, thanked him, and went back out into the brilliant sunlight of a New Home blue sky. I sat and watched from the curb as cars pulled in and out - all different kinds, from older Toyotas to a Lexus. All in search of supplies for their hobby but really more than that - all in search of something to continue to allow them to do something that they enjoy, their passion.

I heard no sadness in the store that day, no weeping, no complaining - just conversations of excitement and joy about what they were doing, anticipation of the fruits of their labor, backed up by music that added pep and life to the experience. In other words, an environment which facilitated making it a place people want to work, want to be, want to drink in.

Why can't all of our life be like this? Is it impossible - or have simply convinced ourselves that it is?