I’ve lived in or around Boston for pretty much all of the last eight years or so. During that time, I’ve done just about everything that appears on those ‘what to do in Boston’ lists with one notable exception – a trip to the Sam Adams brewery.
This fact occasionally surprises people. The brewery ticks many of my boxes – it’s easily accessible by T or bike, it isn’t expensive, and it involves beer. To top it all off, a lot of people I know have been interested in going with me at various points over the past few years. Looking back, it’s kind of a minor miracle that I haven’t been to the brewery.
And yet, when I thought this over the other day the explanation came to me pretty quickly. I haven’t gone to the brewery yet because it’s always just a good idea, one among a group of other good ideas, and usually another similarly good idea ends up becoming the preference. What tends to happen when the brewery comes up as an idea is that we end up doing something similar – South Boston instead of the South End, the Harpoon brewery instead of Sam Adams, an early evening outing instead of the late afternoon – and the minor detail is enough to keep me away from this local institution for yet another day.
Underlying this constant pattern of deferral is my own attitude – I’m going to make it at some point because it’s the Sam Adams brewery. Everyone goes at some point, right? Surely, it’s just a matter of time before circumstances place me at its front door (and my first order of business will be to demand an explanation for the unexplained disappearance of the Blackberry Witbier, but that’s another story.)
But here's a fact - people who measure the time they’ve spent in Boston by days have been there for a tour or a beer while yours truly, who is now about to start using decades as the measurement unit of choice, has never even seen the building from the outside. I'm convinced I'll get there eventually, but lately I’ve started to question my own conviction.
A lot of things do indeed ‘just happen’ but this obscures the fact that a little initiative goes a long way. I’m starting to think, or maybe learn, that the path to never is paved with later. Many of the people I’ve planned on going to the brewery with at some point or another are no longer able to go for reasons of varying permanence – moved to Atlanta, sobriety, death. They say good things come to those who wait but that doesn’t guarantee those good things will arrive in time, or that better things await those who are impatient.
