Let’s say that you’re a small brewery with a relentless social media presence of three, four or more Fb posts per day, probably 90% of them touting musical performances and various in-house events, but also occasionally including something about the brewery’s great mixed drinks and its guest food trucks.
Scrolling through the posts on March 26, I can see that none of them since March 6 have promoted the brewery’s own house beer, apart from a handful just prior to St. Paddy’s Day that undertook to reassure anxious patrons that as many house beers as possible would be colored green.
At least this confirmed the existence of house beers, even if they were about to be mistreated.
All of which prompts a perfectly serious question of the sort that might occur to an onlooker who, unlike me, is by no means a beer aficionado, and the answer to which also addresses my reluctance to say anything at all about local brewers when I can’t say very much that’s good, and the question is this: Wouldn’t it be easier and less expensive not to brew at all, than to be this disinterested in what you’re brewing now?
Or, maybe this follow-up: If you’re not going to use that brewery, could I borrow it?
Beers with a Stoic closes a circle that dates to 1978, when my first college class was “Intro to Philosophy.” Later, philosophy and history were my major and minor, respectively. Stoicism comes to us from ancient Greece, positing that to embrace the virtues of wisdom, courage, justice and moderation, we can attain “ataraxia,” or a sense of inner tranquility and harmony in our own lives, focusing on matters we can control — thoughts, emotions, and actions — while accepting the things we cannot, like the actions of others, or the natural course of events taking place in the world around us. No one is perfect, least of all me. But we all keep trying, pausing here and there for a beer. For more: Stoicism.
