What Do You Get Someone Whose Taste You Don't Know Yet?

Every December I end up buying coffee for somebody I don't know very well yet. A new in-law, a neighbor who just moved in, a client who mentioned once in passing that she drinks coffee black. You want to get it right and you have almost nothing to go on.

This is the actual problem generosity runs into. It's easy to be generous with people you already understand. It's harder, and honestly more generous, to give something to someone before you know what they'll do with it.

So a few years ago I started handing people the sampler instead of guessing. Six bags, two ounces each, one of everything from the brightest single origin we carry to the darkest blend. Nobody has to commit to a pound of something they might not like. They just get to find out, on their own time, which one is theirs.

I like this better than picking for them. Picking for someone assumes you already know them. Handing them six small bags and saying "tell me which one" is an admission that you don't, yet, and an invitation to find out together. That's most of what hospitality actually is, I think. Not knowing the answer in advance. Making room for someone to show you who they are.

There's a version of generosity that's really just confidence in disguise, buying the thing you'd want for yourself and calling it a gift. The better version costs you something. It means sitting with not knowing, and giving anyway.

If there's someone on your list this year you haven't quite figured out, that might be the whole point. Let the gift be the question, not the answer.

Every person who walks through this is worth that kind of attention, whether or not we ever learn their name. Choose to be kind. Choose to be grateful. Choose to be happy.

— Nina of GiaNina Collective