The human touch

Dear reader,

Chef Young is a regular at a nearby cafe. I always see him there with a book, and there’s always just one drink that he gets: his hot oat latte.

Although, as a fine dining chef who works in Manhattan, he could easily afford to get even better tasting beans and a fancier espresso machine and make his drink at home, he chooses to come to this nearby cafe.

“Why does he do that?” I always wondered every time I’d see and talk to him.

So this time I saw him, I decided to ask.

“What makes you come here so regularly, Chef? Do you really like their coffee?”

“More than the coffee, it’s about this ritual for me,” he said with a smile on his face. “Coming here, drinking my latte, talking to the baristas and other customers, I cannot do that at home.”

He went on to share about how interacting with other people inspires his own ideas. He has been writing short pieces in his notes app. Some of those writings are in the form of poetry, and others, paragraphs. He did not read them to me, but he told me the story behind some of them.

“Rice fog” was the title of one of his writings.

He shared how, when he was very young, he would see a kind of fog in his village in Korea when everyone made steamed rice. Later, when he came to the US, he met people from different countries who also, at some point in interacting with Chef Young, mentioned similar memories from their own childhoods. That inspired this particular writing of his.

“If those interactions hadn’t taken place, I would’ve never recalled this part of my childhood, and this writing may have never taken place.”

There truly is something special that happens when two people interact. Often, conversations don’t really leave the immediate surface-level topic, but sometimes, they get truly meaningful. People begin to reminisce about stories they’ve lived through.

Very few ideas occur with only the self. A significant number of ideas are byproducts of interactions with other people, whether it be in person or through their writings and stories.

Although AI may learn to talk like humans, I think it’s unlikely that it will be able to replicate the human touch.

This, perhaps, is a reminder for both you and me to be more present with the people around us than we normally are.

Take care, dear reader. I’ll see you next week.

Warmly,
Suraj