There is a certain romance in the act of drinking coffee that I have never been able to shake. It is not the romance of candlelit dinners or breathless declarations, but the quieter sort—what the poet Pablo Neruda once called “the black coffee of the dawn”, the kind that “sits in your cup and warms your hands, a faithful friend.” Coffee has been this to me for as long as I can remember—a companion, a pause, a kind of anchor to the day. I cannot separate the act of drinking coffee from the act of being with others, and yet, I also find something deeply true in the solitary cup.
When I first saw Vincent van Gogh’s Orphan Man with Top Hat, Drinking Coffee, it felt less like encountering an artwork and more like stumbling across a reflection of myself—not in the particulars of dress or age, but in the posture, in the moment. The man sits in a plain wooden chair, shoulders leaning forward, coat drawn about him. His top hat, once a symbol of dignity, seems softened by time, much like the lines on his face. The cup is small in his hands, yet it commands his full attention. Nothing else exists for him in this instant but the slow lift of porcelain to lips, the inhalation of its steam, the quiet claim of the first sip.
There is an old Dutch phrase, gezelligheid, that resists direct translation but speaks to warmth, belonging, and a sense of contentment in the company of others. My own life has been steeped in this idea. Coffee has been my way of creating that atmosphere—whether traveling with my brother and finding hidden cafés down unfamiliar streets, or setting out fresh mugs for my students and colleagues in the morning. The act is small, almost invisible, yet it transforms the air of a room. It is my offering, my way of saying, you are welcome here.
And yet, like the man in van Gogh’s drawing, I also recognize the other side of this ritual. There is a deep satisfaction in the solitary cup, in sitting alone yet not feeling lonely, in being able to savor without distraction. Van Gogh himself understood this kind of moment. Writing to his brother Theo in January 1882, from The Hague, he spoke of his affection for “the common people” and for the “simple, honest things” in life. He described the importance of “living with the models, sitting with them at the same table, drinking coffee together,” not to romanticize their poverty but to acknowledge their humanity. “One must work with love for the people and for nature,” he wrote, “for that is the only way to gain the trust of what is real.”
In the Orphan Man, I see both my public and private self. I see the teacher who brews coffee for a room full of teenagers, the traveler who shares a cappuccino across a café table, the friend who leans forward in conversation over a steaming mug. But I also see the quiet side of me—the one who wakes before the world stirs, cradles the first cup in my hands, and lets the mind wander. I see the man who can sit, like van Gogh’s figure, with shoulders bent toward the warmth of a drink as though it is both shield and sustenance.
There is an elegance to the way van Gogh handles this figure. His lines are sparse but certain. The background is left blank, as if to remind us that everything important is contained in the gesture itself. I think about how easily we overlook such moments. We tell ourselves that life’s meaning is in the grand events, the celebrated milestones, but so often, it resides in the ordinary. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.” The orphan man’s riches are in his cup. Mine are, too.
Van Gogh wrote often about these “small riches.” In another letter from 1882, he told Theo of walking in the rain to visit the men at the almshouse, sharing in their simple meals and drinks, and sketching them not as curiosities but as fellow travelers in life. “The poorest woodcutter, the most tattered old man with a crust of bread and a cup of coffee—these are the images that stay with me,” he said. It is no surprise, then, that his Orphan Man carries such weight. The drawing is not satire or sentimentality—it is respect.
The fanciful part of me imagines that if I stepped into that sepia-toned space, I would not startle him. I would simply sit down across from him, top hat or no, and we would drink in companionable silence. I would tell him about the coffee shops in foreign cities, about the way my students’ eyes brighten when they smell fresh grounds in the morning, about how sometimes the smallest kindness—a warm drink, a shared table—can dissolve the invisible walls between people. He might nod, or perhaps he would just keep sipping. That would be enough.
And when I think about how I see myself, I realize that I am, in a way, always in that chair. Sometimes I am surrounded by friends, sometimes I am alone, but the cup remains. It is a vessel not just for coffee, but for connection, for ritual, for the steadying of the soul. In the orphan man’s careful lift of his cup, I see my own hope—that each small act might carry enough warmth to sustain me, and perhaps, to sustain others.