When the cafe has a tolerant heart, coffee and culture

A novel lasted five years and was finally completed in this humble cafe, where the dream of a woman in poverty quietly spread her wings.

In the small town of Edinburgh in Scotland, there is a cafe called Nicholson, which remained unknown in the 1990s. Although Europeans have a penchant for drinking coffee, as the Austrian writer Zweig said: I'm not in a cafe, I'm on my way to a cafe. But the profound cultural tradition does not bring it customers, and most of the time, it is always deserted.

At that time, inadvertently, there was often a young mother patronizing the cafe with a stroller. She always sat down in a corner facing the street, sometimes gazing at the scene on the street outside the glass window, thoughtful, and sometimes pulled back to the real world by the baby's cry, hurriedly shaking the stroller so that she could calm down. More often, she would pick up a pen and write something quickly on a piece of paper she grabbed, as if it would disappear if she didn't hold it tightly.

Occasionally, the waiter at the cafe would come up to her table and ask her what she needed. She would always look up in some panic, sometimes ordering the cheapest cup of coffee, sometimes simply shaking her head, and then looking at the waiter's expression slightly nervously. Fortunately, the waiter never showed disdain or disdain, which was almost tantamount to an eviction order. In any case, he always bowed with a smile and then retreated gracefully. This made her breathe a sigh of relief and took a fancy to the cafe for its tolerance of not judging people by their appearance. She really has no confidence in what she wears, because she is a single mother who supports herself and her young children on government benefits. She doesn't have the money to buy clothes and, like other women of this age, makes herself look more decent. And she was forced to come to the cafe herself, because the winter in Scotland was really cold, and the apartment she rented was so small and cold that she could not only keep warm, but also reach out her hand and write her dream with a pen.

Yes, although life is a little difficult, it doesn't prevent people from having dreams. Her dream was born at the age of 24 when a Manchester-to-London train was accidentally delayed for four hours. during the long wait, she gazed out of the window at the grass, forest and blue sky. suddenly the image of a thin, bespectacled, dark-haired boy burst into her mind. She had no pen or paper at hand, and she could not write it down. An idea gave her the impulse to write, but life always seemed to joke with her, going to Portugal as a teacher, falling in love with a journalist, getting married, and giving birth to a daughter. Then the divorce, holding the child in the left hand and the suitcase containing the broken fragments of the novel in the right hand, returned to the hometown town. The earthly life is so dark and cold that she wants to escape, and the world she writes becomes her yearning. Only in that fantasy space can she tell her experiences and hopes at will through those characters. Thanks to this kind cafe, although she often occupies the window seat for hours, although the baby's sometimes shrill cries break the usual silence here, and although she rarely buys a few cups of coffee to spend, but she has never been looked down upon, ridiculed or expelled. It is peaceful and loving, does not hate the poor and loves the rich, just like the sun, unsparingly spends on everyone, no matter how much money there is in anyone's pocket.

A novel lasted five years and was finally completed in this humble cafe, where the dream of a woman in poverty quietly spread her wings. What happened later was too shy for her to imagine. Her book was published after several twists and turns, and then quickly became popular all over the world. In just a few years, her works were translated into more than 60 languages and sold more than 200 million copies in more than 200 countries and regions. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, she was never penniless and suddenly had a fortune of $1 billion, even richer than the Queen of England. She is Rowling, the author of Harry Potter.

Now that the small town of Edinburgh where Rowling lives has lost its former serenity, thousands of Harry Potter fans and Rowling fans have come to look for traces of her life. The Nicholson Cafe, which has a broad inclusive heart, has become a world-famous tourist attraction. The place where Rowling rocked the stroller and wrote in the cafe was as simple and insipid as before, as if drifting away from the old days.

The caf é, like Rowling, is grateful for its tolerance that led to the birth of such a great work, and it also tells us to respect people in poverty or adversity. As long as they do not lose their dreams, everything can be changed, and we ourselves are often blinded by such changes.

-(source: motivational website for college students)