Coffee Cult(ure)

Have you ever noticed how some of the best, most intense and informative discussions take place over coffee?

Maybe it was all that caffeine or perhaps something about the elevator-like jazz playing in the background, but I had the strangest thoughts at Starbucks recently...Is the concept of long term commitments slowly dying out?

As a generation, we have been brought up to be extremely selfish...right from when we were kids, our parents, who taught themselves parenting 101 on new-age books that touted philosophies radically different from the approach taken by our grandparents, gave us a ton of options. Of course, for the majority of us, the freedom to make our own choices when it came to colleges, majors, and careers remained too...I think we all grew up with a sense of entitlement in terms of making choices... "Just do what makes you happy..." Ok, but what if every time you stop being happy with a certain decision you've made...does that entitle you to go ahead and change it the moment things seem difficult...or leave you unhappy/unsatisfied? This is where relationships come in...my parent's generation was all about making compromises...if you're not happy in the marriage/relationship..."ADJUST"/ "COMPROMISE"..."No person is perfect; no relationship is perfect!" etc etc...
For us, with our well-documented short attention spans, constant craving for new and exciting experiences and selfish attitudes...could we handle the idea of giving up all the possibilities for one person, one family for the rest of our lives...? Is that kind of forever-commitment just too much for us to handle? Would we not always be thinking, somewhere in our heads, I shouldn't compromise or settle the moment something went wrong? Would we want to work hard to remain happy?

Could we ever eliminate all the other possibilities and just hope that we've made the right decision with picking the person we want to be with?

The romantic in me would like to think so...the realist in me is not so sure...