Wednesday, March 2, 2016

"One Conflict-Free Life Please. To Go."

The Storybook Cafe on Elm was all concrete, metal, and glass. There was a row of stools facing the window, lined with hipsters and their Macboooks, no doubt earning money through social media management and marketing.

The barista wore a red flannel shirt, a beard, and brown boots. How, I wondered, did this lumberjack end up in perpetually sunny, 70-degree Beachtown, California. I glanced at the menu.


"What can I get for you?"

I put the menu down. "I will have one conflict-free life. To go."

"That's not on the menu."

I frowned and glanced at the menu again. Then I winked at him casually.

"It is for me."

"It's not on the menu for anyone."

"That's not true. I know for a fact you just served it to Miss Knee-high Boots and Tunic over there." I gestured to a tall blonde, sipping from her cup dreamily, staring at her screen.

"What other customers ordered doesn't matter. And besides, that wasn't what she ordered. Because it's not on the menu."

"It should be. It would really help your sales."

"That's not exactly the point."

"You mean it's not your job to give the customer what they want?"

"We serve stories, Ma'm. Thus the name."

Hipsters. What bunch of smart-asses. I persisted: "But that's all I want. I don't want any of these other things: 8 ounces of sorrow with a joy rinse? Relationship conflict with a character boost? Who would want that? Sounds like you get a lot of what you don't want, for just a tiny bit of what you do want."

"I don't make the menu. I just serve it. If you need more time to decide, I will help the next guest while you consider." He gestured to the man behind me and I stepped aside, disgruntled.

I took a seat at a glass table.

All I wanted was to be happy and stress-free. I didn't see the problem. An old man sitting next to me wearing a scarf and dark-rimmed glasses interrupted my thoughts.

"Might I make a suggestion?"

I was suspicious, but eternally polite, as always - a trick I learned to reduce conflict on my own. "Certainly."

"If you want a conflict-free life, you can try next-door at Dissipation Brewery. But I must warn you, I spent a lot of time there in my younger days and the conflict-free life doesn't exist. It might last for awhile, but it always disappears. That's why I dreamed up this." He gestured to the cafe.

"How do you stay in business?" I asked bluntly.

"Because people only think they want a conflict-free life. What they really want is a meaningful life; they want strong character, quiet confidence, and trust in something beyond themselves. Even when they say they don't want those things, they do."

I sat there annoyed. I wished I could tell him to stop talking to me.

"The good stories always have conflict because without conflict, people would stay in stasis - forever at the beginning of their story, never changing, never growing, never reaching the promised land. Just stuck at the beginning of the story. What if Frodo had stayed in the Shire? What if Huck Finn had stayed with his father?"

"They would have avoided a lot of trouble?" I quipped.

He ignored me.

"What do you really want out of your story? I bet if you thought about it, you would discover that the conflict-free life is priced much higher than any human being can afford. That is why it is not on the menu. It costs your character, your empathy, your hopefulness, your dreams, the fulfilling of your needs, your spiritual life, your personal relationships, and cost upon cost until your life is bankrupt of worth." He stood and folded his paper, taking his cane as he did so.

"For dissipation, you can visit the place next door. To get your life started, stop protecting yourself. He who seeks to save his life will surely lose it."

I sat silently. I knew I should feel inspired. But I just felt nothing.

It may have been a few hours, or minutes, but when I looked up, the lumberjack stood in front of me with a frothy latte.

"The gentlemen you were speaking with earlier ordered this for you."

"What is it?" I looked at it suspiciously.

"He said not to tell you. But to say that it was good." Then he set it down and walked away.


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