People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.
John C. Maxwell
I am constantly trying to cut things out of my life.
Too much clothes in the closet and I feel wasteful; I've only one body to dress after all, why keep all these pairs of pants? Books I'll never read collect dust and I feel as though I'm doing them wrong; they're meant to be appreciated, and I have done them some injustice by keeping them closed on my shelf. It takes some discipline to cut these unnecessary things out of our lives, but it can be done.
I sometimes wonder if I take the idea of simple living too far sometimes.
Cutting people out of my life whom I've deemed to take away my emotional energy or dropping hobbies I truly love but see no monetary value in them. I wonder how much should be shed to be living really freely?
It’s rather ironic, because I want to be a person who adds value to the lives of those around me, yet I weigh and calculate the benefits and losses and make my decisions on such rationalities, when in fact, adding value to a person's life might not be something we can measure at all.
Do we ever really know when and how we may impact someone?
In my opinion, there is the value we may unknowingly give to another person, and it's all well and good. But to really add value to someone's life it must be done intentionally.
Not all things worth doing are simple. They require a cost.
Studying a language, learning a new instrument, making friends (and maintaining those friendships), running a healthy business... They all have value in their own ways, and require much intentionality to succeed.
Following this, then I must ask this question of myself; 'am I making decisions based not on what will be a loss to me (monetarily, temporally, or emotionally) but on what will add value to my life'?
To flip the mindset - more than calculating the potential loss, can I trim my life based only on calculating the potential value? Hard to say. There are so many good things that give value. This whole post is a desperate justification for all the things I want to do and at the same time, a realization that I cannot do them all.
But never fear; though I'm at a temporary loss on how to prioritize some parts of my life, the thing I do know is that cafes add value that I cannot find elsewhere; these unique homes away from home, study spots, conversational safe zones, personal office space, creative escapes... The Cafe Hunter is never uncertain on the value a good cafe brings her.
This cafe is Add Coffee.
No doubt you can see where these meandering thoughts about the addition of value stemmed from; these concerns I had were further prompted by just the name of this cafe.
It's a nice spot out in Jugyo-dong. The whole cafe takes up 4 floors, plus a small rooftop that looks over the partly modernized area; skyscrapers seen against the unevenly stacked factories and old businesses of Jung-gu area. The cafe easily stands out.
Each floor has it's own atmosphere; one cozy, darkened room with comfortable chairs, one floor all white, with flower-patterned curtains and metal tables, the uppermost floor a single room with a big conference table adorned simply with one vase of wildflowers.
I met with a halfie friend here, named Stella. She's half-Korean, half-German and has such beautiful eyes. This is a shared commonality we seem to all have - those giveaway eyes.
The owner is brisk and messaged me five minutes before I arrived that morning asking when I was coming; she's undoubtedly on top of everything else happening inside her cafe. She bakes interesting breads each morning from scratch and shared her decorating secrets; this chair I found and re-upholstered it. These stools I'm throwing away; they're too old to be considered vintage. If you have some time, take a moment to chat.
The stairways are very narrow. For those in wheelchairs or those with children, I would not recommend this cafe. It can be quite treacherous getting up and down the steps.
Add Coffee added some value to my morning. I hope you'll find that it does for you, too