Hop, Skip And Beer
Apparently, today is Beer Lovers day. And rather than question why we need a day for beer, I thought I'd do something far more scientific. Enjoy one! Not necessarily the beer. The moment around it. I was reminded of my college friend Dan. Friday nights with Dan somehow became games, stories, arguments, laughter and, inevitably, beer. Dan loved beer enough to have probably written a book about it. But looking back, I don't think the beer was what made those evenings memorable. It was Dan. It was the people around the table. It was the ridiculous plan for a trip that sounded brilliant at 11 p.m. and completely insane the next morning. It was picking on somebody we loved. It was remembering something that had happened ten years earlier and laughing about it as if it had happened yesterday. The beer was simply there. And perhaps that's one of the interesting things about beer. Beer is astonishingly old. So we've had a very long time to perfect the art. And we've invented quite a vocabulary along the way. Ale. Lager. Hops. Malt. Yeast. Here's a fun one: Ale and lager aren't separated by colour. The difference is in the yeast and how it ferments. And then there are hops. Which means that somewhere along the way, humans discovered something rather wonderful: A bitter little flower could help a drink last longer. People are a bit like that too. Some add sweetness to our lives. Some add laughter. Some challenge us. Some tell us the truth when we'd rather not hear it. And some people are like hops. They add just enough bitterness to make the whole thing more interesting. You probably know one. We spend an enormous amount of time choosing the right things. And yet, years later, what we usually remember isn't any of those things. We remember who was there. You may not remember what you drank on a particular Friday night. But you remember who made you laugh until your stomach hurt, the friend who stayed when everybody else left, the person who told the same terrible joke for twenty years, the evening when nobody wanted to go home. Perhaps that's why sharing a drink has survived for thousands of years. The drink gives people an excuse to sit down. The sitting down gives them time. And time gives people a chance to become important to one another. That's the real magic. Not the beer. The company. If the moment feels right, send them a little sign that you haven't forgotten the good times. Because sometimes a relationship doesn't need fixing. It just needs remembering. Who is the person you could share an ordinary drink with and somehow turn it into a memorable evening? Until tomorrow, Bob
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