Books have a strange way of arriving in our lives just when we need them most. Before the Coffee Gets Cold found me on a quiet afternoon, when the world outside felt too hurried and I longed for something unhurried and human.
On the surface, it is a simple tale—people in a small Tokyo café who are allowed to travel back in time, but only under certain rules. They can meet someone from their past, say words left unsaid, or simply sit across from a face they miss. Yet there is a catch: nothing in the present will change, and the coffee must be finished before it gets cold.
What struck me, as I turned the pages, was not the fantasy of time travel, but the ordinariness of the longings that drive people into that chair. A woman wants to meet the sister she quarrelled with. A lover wishes for one more conversation. A mother dreams of holding her child, even if just for a moment. These are not grand, heroic wishes—they are the everyday aches of being human. And perhaps that is what makes them so moving.
The book seems to whisper an old truth: we cannot rewrite the past. No matter how much we may regret, the road behind us stays as it was. But we can soften its edges. We can find healing in a word spoken late, in a look exchanged across time—even if it doesn’t alter history. The real change, the book suggests, happens within us, not outside.
Reading it, I found myself thinking about the conversations I have left incomplete, the words I hurried past. How often do we postpone affection, believing there will always be another day? The rules of the café are not so different from the rules of life itself: the coffee always gets cold; time always runs out. The best we can do is to speak, to listen, to love—while the cup is still warm in our hands.
When I closed the book, I did not feel sadness, though many of its pages are dipped in melancholy. Instead, I felt gratitude. For the chance to live in this moment, for the warmth of a shared cup, for the voices of those still within reach.
Sometimes, all it takes is a quiet story set in a little café to remind us that the present is the only time we truly have—and it is more precious than we realise.
Comments
Post a Comment