Bermuda had always been top of my travel bucket list, so hot on the heels of my move to Toronto I realized there was no better time than at that very present, just as the crispness started to hit the golden horseshoe to high tail it down to the little island in the South Atlantic.
Cultural quirks aside, Bermuda really is, for the record one of my absolute favourite places and spaces. And of course as any little island that can – it is host to many fabulous bars – so Beau and I made it our mission to find an appropriate one (one bar, not one drink) for our first official cocktail hour, which for the record is really any hour when you are in vacay mode.
We settle in and our bartender, Robert, nearly the age of the plantation style resort we were staying at was quick to get us something refreshing, something local, because when in Rom… Bermuda I mean.
The bar starts to get busier as people start to wake up, or finish their morning golf round, one older gentleman saunters up to the bar to order a Guinness, Robert obliges with a ‘yes sir’ in his thick Bermudian accent, pours the beer, then takes the glass, places it on the back counter, turns around and gets to work on other drink orders. I being curious, give Beau a look, like is it one for me one for the bartender?, talk about work life balance. Now, I am not a beer drinker, never have been, never will be, so this was a bit of shocker. I mean wasn’t the point to pour, serve and drink? We are on holidays for goodness sakes, give that man his drink, he looks thirsty! I must have looked like I was perplexed because Beau then took it upon himself to open up the gospel and educate this millennial on the proper way to pour a Guinness.
Beau explained that pouring a Guinness really was an art, a precise practice by experts in the field, you have to have the end goal in mind, and understand the prime state in which the beer should be consumed. You want something settled, a beautiful heavy mass of velvety goodness, rather than looking like you just shook your can of coke and poured it out of desperation. Apparently the best part was the pour, which of course got me thinking, it’s just like the best part to a relationship, that delicious felling of falling in love.
And there you go, an Epiphany, on holiday day one. Normally I don’t get them until I’ve had plenty of sun. However, it dawned on me, that the Guinness experience was like a relationship, you have to give it time to settle, to be at its optimal, you can’t just expect a relationship to be in a good place right away, nor can you force it, you have to let things evolve, or settle naturally.
There is a reason why that book “The Rules’ was a best seller, or cult classic (really all depends on your dating strategy) – but for those that loved it, we understood the value of playing hard to get, of not putting it all out on the table, to be like a carefully poured Guinness and sit on the back shelf to settle, to optimize before actually indulging. In a time where we can get absolutely anything we want in literally an instant, from Thai food delivered at 2am, to your massage therapy reimbursement in a matter of minutes (yes, I am quite a practical person), isn’t it perhaps a novelty to have to wait for something? If the proper Guinness pouring was actually practiced and leveraged across other aspects of our life would we all not start to realize, eventually, that anything good worth experiencing is actually worth the wait.
runningwiththeboys. 