Pint-Sized Philosophy

What an Irish bartender taught me about living

I wrote the following column years (and years!) ago, so I’m sure a few of you will have read it before … but in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I’m hauling it out of the archives, dusting it off, and because I always tend to forget — reminding myself of its message: live while you’re alive, Coolidge!

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Pint-Sized Philosophy

The Irish have been known to knock out a poem or two (think Seamus, Oscar, Van). And, while I’ve been known to wax poetic on occasion, I’m neither Irish nor poet.

But I know poetry when I see it – a flock of geese flying over my head at dawn; feel it – rain on my skin when everyone else has run for cover; hear it – anything Beethoven; and smell it – in a kitchen full of cooking.

But it wasn’t until recently that I learned you can even taste poetry – in a pint of beer, no less. Irish beer. Guinness beer to be exact.

A few months back I decided to take myself out to commemorate (celebrate, really) the anniversary of my divorce. A bit o’ (Irish?) luck landed me at The Irish Rover pub in Gulf Gate Village in Sarasota.

I took a seat at the bar and explained, sheepishly, to the young, ridiculously good-looking bartender — an Irishman named Alan — that I wanted a beer but my Bud Light taste buds didn’t know what to order in a real, honest-to-Irish pub.

“A Guinness,” Alan said, and started pouring. “You’ll either love it or you’ll hate it.” (Ah, the Irish – no in between for them.)

Of course, for me, even getting a pint of beer is never about just a pint of beer. I always want to know the hows, whys, and wherefores of everything. (A supremely irritating habit of mine that must drive even my dearest friends nuts, though they’re too kind to say so.) As I watched Alan pour, I pummeled him with questions: Why is Guinness the best? Where’s it made? Why does it have to be poured a special way? Why is it known as “a meal in a glass?” Why do I have to wait until it turns all black to drink it? Why, why, why.

A man of few words, Alan was polite enough to come up with answers for as long as it took him to pour the beer, but as soon as he set the full-to-the-brim, murky glass down on the bar in front of me, he laid down a bit of bar-side philosophy as well:

“The only thing you need to know about Guinness is how to drink it,” he said, then turned away to another customer.

After a minute or two had passed, I lifted the glass to my lips and drank. I didn’t taste beer, not as I’d ever known it. This was no beer to be tossed back. This wasn’t even beer really; it was poetry of the earth. It was liquid life.

The Guinness had heft and humor and it rumbled through my body like an army tank on a mission, ferreting out any lingering questions and blasting them out of my bloodstream entirely. I sat at the bar, drank my beer, toasted the now-defunct marriage I’d naively thought would last forever, and went home a Guinness girl for good.

It occurs to me now, months after that initial quaff, that Alan the bartender, for all his youth, had me beat on understanding something pretty basic about not just beer, but about life: That the point of beer is simply to enjoy it … and the point of life is simply to live it.

Maybe I’ve made the same mistake with my life that I made with that first Guinness – asking too many questions toward too little end. After all, I can ask questions until the cows come home but the only two things any of us will ever really know for certain is that we’re alive today and one day we no longer will be.

Image from pixabay

So live now. Carpe diem. Laissez les bons temps roulez. Believe you’re lucky, even if you’re not Irish.

With thanks to Alan, I’m finally understanding that the only thing I need to know about life is how to live it – with grace, humor, and, of course, the occasional pint of Guinness.