cheese danish.

I had heard from reliable sources that starbucks' cheese danishes were the absolute best. I also heard that if you don't go to get them early enough, they're as good as gone. Since I'm not one to be considered a morning person or an early riser exactly, I always just figured that my day of tasting that particular pastry was inevitably lost.

Now that doesn't mean I didn't actually attempt to get it a number of times. I pull up at the drive-thru, order my sweet tea and then tentatively ask if they, by any chance (more like by some miracle from heaven!), had any cheese danishes left. One time the person taking my order actually laughed out loud and said 'those don't usually last very long passed the time we open... at 5am'. The earliest the clock in my car ever showed was 830. In short, I wasn't even close!

I understand that there were a few alternative ways I could have approached this. I could have found other starbucks to check. I also could have gotten up and out of my comfy bed earlier. I maybe could have even befriended someone that worked there and gotten him or her to save me one as soon as they were delivered. But all those would have been beside the point. You see, I honestly wasn't obsessed with the thought that I had to have a cheese danish, nor did I necessarily have to have one now. I didn't go to starbucks with any sort of regularity, anyway.

Still, there was no denying that my wanting to try the cheese danish never really disappeared. It was one of those unresolved points of interest that kept popping up from the back of my mind, reminding me that it had yet to be resolved. Eventually I was confident it would be; I just didn't know exactly when.

The thing is, in the process of taking my chances every so often, I ordered a cheese danish one random morning, and lo and behold, all I heard in response was 'would that be all for you today?'. Not 'I'm sorry, we're out of cheese danishes' or 'can we offer you something else to try instead?'. Would that be all for you today? - very ordinary words enough to make my day extraordinary, especially when I realized it was already a little passed 9am!!

How was it, you ask? My cheese danish was scrumptious. It was everything that my trusted friends said it would be and more. Not only that, it felt wonderful to somehow be able to defy the odds. Some simple, but very valuable lessons became quite tangible to me that day -- that we've got to keep taking our chances regardless of the scenario set before us; that achieving something really good involves risk. That disappointment along the way doesn't make reaching the ultimate destination any less sweet. And more often than not, it'll be well worth the wait.

Not bad for everyday life according to starbucks.