By Michael Tyler, Equal Justice Society Poet-in-Residence
Three days into 2026, I took myself to a small café in my neighborhood. Amongst the many such establishments nearby, I frequent this one the most because it serves a brewed concoction called a Cafecito. It is also referred to as a Café Cubano, which is an intensely flavored, sweetened shot of extra strong espresso whipped into a creamy foam called “la crema”. If you’ve never tried one, I highly recommend it but be forewarned of its potency. One shot can power you to clean your entire house. A double-shot, my usual order (not for the faint of heart or anyone with a faint heart), can turn you into a community organizer. This one drink also serves as a metaphor for my life. I’ve had to be very strong to get any sweetness from it.
I’ve been asked many times through the decades, if I ever suffer from writer’s block and if so, how do I overcome it. Fortunately, I’ve rarely had an impasse of creativity, but on the occasions that I have — Cafecito. If galactical portals to alternative worlds do actually exist, and if our greatest explorations occur internally, this is the elixir Jodie Foster could have used in the film Contact for her journey, instead of the billions of dollars spent on the whirling, gyro apparatus that dropped her into a wormhole, while traveling inside of a pulsating, metallic orb.
So, it was to be that after trying to perform a mental colonic to cleanse myself of 2025, by working out for an hour and a half while listening to amapiano (also highly recommended; try Ethekwini by Freddy K & Mr. JazziQ, for an intro), I effected a blankness of thoughts. I don’t know if this could properly be described as a “block”, but I would have needed magnets attached to the first and last letters of any words in my head, to form a complete sentence. Cafecito.
It was not long after having the first few sips, that wording for the New Year began to formulate in my mind. As this was happening, a young (early twenties) woman entered the café, placed her order for a flat white, which is served in a small cup similar to the one a Cafecito comes in, and took a seat in a chair adjacent to the sofa I was on. As she approached the chair, we traded civil glances and she raised her cup towards me, as if to acknowledge and affirm that we were having the same drink.
Soon after she sat down, she sought to engage me in conversation. The eager expression on her face, the enthusiasm in her voice and the intentional display of progressive comfort in her posture all suggested to me that I might be a New Year’s resolution for her. She struck me as a lifetime, White suburbanite infused with the awe of the big city, as she began her university experience in The Loop wanting to test the validity of her left-leaning approach to life. On visual assessment alone, I must have appeared as an ideal candidate. We were so opposite in appearance, as to have been diametrically opposed by purposeful design. I estimated her to be 5’3’, 110 pounds and in need of weighted boots, to not fly away in a wind gust coming off Michigan Avenue. Her skin was the color of lemon yogurt (read The Skin You Live In and you’ll understand my description) and she had bone-straight, very blond hair. Me: a 6’3”, 230 pounds, bald, brown (think Indian teak wood) man, with a very white beard that verified me being in my sixties.
Five minutes into our social experiment…conversation, she confirmed every point of my speculation, including the resolution challenge. She conveyed that she wanted to talk to more people she perceived as not being like her, or the people she has grown up around. She wanted to have a more inclusive experience and understanding of people. I endorsed her effort. She told me that I was her first attempt.
She had given considerable thought as to how she was to socialize herself this way, based on my evaluation of the first, exploratory question she asked: “If you had to pick two words to describe your approach to life, what would they be?” I thought this to be a question born of a perceptively, inquisitive mind; not at all the typical query I get about the brand of hoodie I’m wearing (I have quite a collection).
I told her that I view life in terms of inevitability and likelihood, while many other people I’ve encountered and overheard see it in terms of entitlement and expectation. I gave her those alternative terms to have something to explain against for greater understanding, but to also set the framework for a discussion on race and gender (privilege and patriarchy), if she was seeking one. She said that she had asked her question to nearly 1oo hundred people but never to someone like me (African American), and that she never got the answers I gave, and that she was intensely interested in why I chose the words I did.
I explained that it is inevitable that I will one day die — no one is immortal (though some people believe this one guy…nevermind). I countered by saying that it is a likelihood that if I continue my exercise and diet regimen, shun environments of reckless conduct and avoid rude and belligerent people, I will extend my life to its maximum capacity. I further explained that it is inevitable that the many errors, conflicts and atrocities committed by humans in the past will again be realized by humans in the present, and repeated by humans in the future. Why? Because throughout all of history, human motivations have remained the same and because stupidity is incurable. I followed up by saying that it remains a likelihood that we will always save and redeem ourselves by the rescue of our sensibility, the essentiality of our empathy and the life-preserving dictate of our compelling fear of death. I applied that explanation to the country and the world we now live in; both being theaters of human conduct that are currently staging our repetitive proclivities and that hopefully, soon, will present our redemptive inclinations.
She pressed me on explaining the entitlement-expectation comparison. I said that many people live believing that their desires are a proprietary birthright, and that their wants are obligations for others to fulfill. These people can’t comprehend that though they can be accepted for who they are, no one has to accommodate the delusions of their expectations. Whereas inevitability and likelihood execute life on the cause and effect of judgement and accountability, entitlement and expectation project life as an experience of consequences and outcomes they feel no responsibility towards. The first two words yield a better chance for fulfillment, and the latter two words portend a greater fate towards grievance.
We spent nearly an hour in discussion, before I turned her question back to her. I was certain that she had her two words chosen with a well thought out explanation. She assured me that she did, but she didn’t want to share them. She felt embarrassed that she hadn’t given them as much thought, as she perceived I had given mine. I tried to assuage her by saying, jokingly, that she should never feel embarrassed about the shortcomings of youth which are equally matched by the long-goings of aging. Besides, I had given over forty more years of thinking to what matters to me, than she had been alive. I conveyed to her that should she stay on the path of probing for deeper meanings and connections in life, she will find that her two words will certainly change many times before she reaches my age. I added that this was both inevitable and likely. She laughed.
My point in sharing this experience is to suggest that whatever we’re going through in life, be it personal or societal, there is an inevitability that it will occur because we cannot control the many variables of our existence. But also, there is a likelihood that our sensibility, compassion and value in being alive will continue to be bring forth the salvation we continue to need, to continue on. The truth of this can be found in one of the most proven adages of all time:
And this too, shall pass.
If the passing takes longer than you expected, Cafecito. And to Maisie, should we meet again, I hope you’ll share your two words.
Happy New Year to everyone.