Starbucks with Cecilia #1: Running Away From Your Problems

Introducing the Starbucks with Cecilia mini-series! This is a series of posts inspired by a fictional coffee session I had with a fictional friend of mine whom I shall name Cecilia: a 23 year-old jazz pianist who’s living in Bali with her half-Dutch, quarter-Brazilian, and quarter-Indonesian fiance.

Cafe Cafe by Protoguy

Several weeks ago I met Cecilia over at one of the many Starbucks joints in Jakarta. Of course, it was located at a prestigious shopping center (it wouldn’t be Starbucks with all the superficial sophistication atmosphere now would it?). She ordered her favorite drink – that didn’t even have any coffee in it – and I ordered the same because I don’t drink coffee, then we sat down at the patio where she could break out a cigarette or two.

It had been a while since we last met – since she’s living in Bali and all that – and I quickly learned she was having troubles with her fiance. Cecilia and I don’t meet very often, but when we do we are quick to jump the small talk and get to the serious discussions – because we both know we don’t have a lot of time. The topic was a slight surprise – though not completely unprepared – when she told me she was thinking about having an affair.

I didn’t reply or comment or be hasty with judgments; I waited for Cecilia to tell the whole story before giving her my opinion. She told me she had been feeling bored and stagnant in her relationship with her fiance, and this chance for a romantic skip felt like a breath of fresh air. But she also told me she knew it was a stupid thing to do, and wondered why do people have affairs anyway.

And so, like the ever faithful and resourceful half-best-friend, half-natural-psychologist I am, I took this as my queue.

The offer of an escape

“This is just me running from my problems, and you running from yours”

That’s what Cecilia said the man said to her. “How dare he!” I thought to myself, to call himself an adult when he still runs away from his problems and even involves someone else in the process. Running away is never the answer, and always the problem – and it’s a major discomfort to know that you don’t have the courage to face your problems.

It has always crushed my heart whenever I think about my friends who are running away from their problems instead of facing them. Once in my childhood, I thought about running away from my problems by moving to another school because I was being bullied by a boy in the current one. But I thought it wouldn’t be real, and the fear of being bullied would always haunt me until I took the courage to face it. My friends usually stood up for me, but that day I stood up for myself and defended my friends when he tried to bully me again. Turns out he wasn’t that tough, and since that day he left me in peace.

Being an adult doesn’t mean we don’t get bullied like we did way back in school – we just have more discreet forms of being bullied. Whether we are threatened by other people, or by the foolishness of our own actions, having the courage to stand up and fight is always a virtue we need armed if we are to succeed in life. Running away could never be an option, unless you plan to spend 17 years exiling yourself in a virtual paradise and constantly saying “this is only temporary” [1].

I remember the story of a character from a video game I once played – Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced [2]. In the game, the main character enters a dream world that is made based on the inner desires of one of his friend. His friend turns into the king of this dream world, and when the main character asks why he’s doing this, the friend answers “Because I want my mother back alive” (his mother had died in the real world story of this game, leaving him to live with his awkward father).

There’s another story from another game – Steambot Chronicles [3]. After defeating the main villain and his accomplice – who turned out to be one of the female and most beautiful team mates all along – a member of the team couldn’t believe that she was dead, and spent an entire year searching for her. His feeling of loss was so severe, he couldn’t accept the reality of her death and became the most miserable, depressed, and lonely soul in the game’s universe.

All these examples, real or surreal, point to the fact that running away from our problems is an unreal escape at best. Today we might be able to escape, but tomorrow the problem will come knocking on our front door again. Maybe not immediately, maybe not for some time, but it will always haunt our lives wherever we may run away to.

The real face of adversity

“It is kind of stupid isn’t it?” asked Cecilia as she took another sip of her non-coffee coffee shop beverage. I nodded my head slightly, giving her the space to acknowledge that she’s only escaping reality without having to be all judgmental on her. She put the cup down and stirred the glass absent-mindedly.

Choosing the courage to stand up to your problems takes a substantial amount of energy. Sometimes the problems are so huge and so life determining, that it’s much much easier to run away. But your heart will be crushed everyday when you wake up and realize that everything you wake up to is a fraud.

Don’t build a dream world and escape into it. Don’t be the most miserable and depressed person in existence. Don’t risk the reality of a real love in exchange for the possibility of a summer romance.

We all need to make the right choices. And the right choices are always the difficult ones. That’s how you know you’re making the right choice, is when it breaks your heart to keep it.

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[1] Elizabeth Gilbert talked about this phenomenon with expatriats living in Bali in her autobiography “Eat Pray Love”. Most of them say it’s only temporary, but some of them have been living there for years. Most of them were running away from superficial lives or ugly divorces
[2] We can learn quite a lot from playing video games. Here is the Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced website if you’re interested in finding out more
[3] Steambot Chronicles has one of the saddest video game storylines I’ve ever played, and also one of the most beautiful soundtracks I’ve ever heard. Here is the official Steambot Chronicles website
[4] Art by Protoguy. Because this is a fictional series, needs some fictional art