Morning cup of Illusion

Pj-day
2 min readSep 28, 2021

<TMDWA — set to 250 words. Around 20 mins of writing and 40 mins of fretting about not writing> Sep 28, 2021

“Here is why coffee makes you less depressed according to science” read the title of the first article. Jake clicked on it. He sat up on his bed, took a sizable sip of his now lukewarm coffee, and continued to read. Mornings had started getting chillier in the vast expansive city outside but his 4th floor apartment stayed at a comfortable 72 degrees Fahrenheit. He had read somewhere that science had shown 72 degrees to be the optimal temperature to wake up to get rid of depression. So he had done that.

The coffee article had been great. It outlined some great research. Apparently some of the best scientists in psychology had done an experiment on 50 males and 50 females and found that coffee does indeed make them feel less depressed. The scientists came from the most illustrious universities some real smart people. Jake took another sip.

The coffee, now a little colder than earlier suddenly seemed to taste a little better. That was odd. Jake looked into the cup for reassurance. It was still brown — or black- depending on how politically correct he wanted to be- but it now looked a little more opaque than before. He sniffed it — it smelled sweeter — well, not exactly the smell of sugar, which he hadn’t put in, since he did not want to get diabetes, and diabetes did run in his family so he was predisposed to it.

The coffee smelled a little stronger. It could also be that the coffee had improved his olfactory perception or that it had opened up his sinuses but he really could not be sure. He had read quite a few articles on the effect of coffee and he did not remember seeing these effects as having been shown by science. Jake made a note on his diary to do research and find out. He really needed to know whether what he noticed was real or illusory.

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