Throughout my college years, I had some of the best roommates. I learned so much from them: how to stay awake all day when you’d been up all night, how to have fun with no money, how to communicate with women and how to have wonderful friendships.
But one of the best things I learned from them came from a piece of paper taped behind the front door. It was written in one of my roommate’s fanciest handwriting styles, and stretched across three sheets of paper taped together. Almost two decades later, I still think about those words (it could have something to do with my huge sweet tooth)…
In life, there is cake and there is frosting. One of the most important keys to happiness can be gained through the lessons of cake and frosting.
You see, women are the cake in life. Cake is yummy, delicious, scrumptious, wonderful, etc. Cake comes in different flavors and sizes. But most importantly, cake is good when eaten all by itself!
But there only seem to be a few popular cakes that don’t have frosting. Pound cake for one. Cobblers. So we spend our time trying to find the perfect frosting. Sometimes women need a little frosting to top our cake because it adds some extra flavor to our cake. Sometimes, we can’t stand the frosting on our cake or we have way too much of it on us that it smothers our cake, so we need to scrape it all off before we gag of disgust or puke it all up. Other times, we think that a certain frosting would be good on our cake, until it’s with our cake and then we realize that it’s nothing but the cheap imitation stuff. Way too many times, we think that we need frosting.
But we don’t need frosting.
Cake is good all by itself. Quite often, we spend all of our time trying to improve our cake with frosting, when we should be improving on what really counts: the quality of our cake. Why add sprinkles to the frosting, when we can add sprinkles to our cake mix? Besides, everyone knows that it’s really hard to change frosting. It’s so sticky and stubborn (especially if frosting is a male)!
However, there is one thing that always goes well with cake: ice cream!
Ice cream represents the friends who support us in life. When has ice cream not complimented cake? Never! Ice cream doesn’t smother our cake, but it sits beside our cake and gives it space. Like friends who learn from each other and grow close, ice cream melts together and blends in with cake, adding the extra flavor required to make the perfect bite.
In case you miss the point, let me repeat it one last time: frosting never seems to be a quick learner, so have patience all my fellow cakes.
CAKE IS GOOD ALL BY ITSELF! BE HAPPY BEING CAKE!
Clause #1: To give frosting a little credit, there may come a time in your life when you may need frosting. But be very careful- it doesn’t happen often. It is not to be confused with cheap and deceitful frosting that takes the advantage of sweet, yummy cake. Be very careful when topping your cake.
CLAUSE #2: Be very careful when frosting and ice cream become one and the same. Most ice cream is best as ice cream. However, there are occasions when ice cream cake is the best (prepared with great care, though)!
So, what does cake and frosting have to do with you?
At the time I initially read this, I was a young woman on the search for love. And that search can often be a theme for our entire lives. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve adjusted “frosting” to be anything that I believe I must add to me in order to be something special. It may be a job title. It may be an amount of money in the bank. It may be a reputation for being the best baker ever (feel free to insert your hobby here). It may be to have the prettiest house on the block. We all have those things we want to be associated with our identity.
As women, we spend so much time trying to be our best selves. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We aren’t content to sit back and wait for things to happen. We go make them happen.
But this is where we often make the mistake that hurts us: we compare our current state to the ideal we have in mind or we compare our life to someone else’s life. And then we get in a funk if we aren’t perfectly matched.
No one else knows the picture you had in mind. Let them think it’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.
We are cake, and cake is good all by itself! Never forget that! Take the time to focus on you and how you are going to reach your goals. Stop thinking that you have to add other people or things to your life in order to be someone special. And along that journey, you will find some wonderful treasures that stick with you: confidence; a unique skill set that’s all yours; friends who get you and who support you; relationships that only help you grow further (both friendship and romantic); places you never thought you’d go; and ways you reach your goals that are quite different than the original image you had in mind (and it’s often FAR better than the initial starting goal).
So your take away today: what one thing will you start doing that will improve your cake batter? (Hint: it doesn’t have to be big. The smaller, the better! And if you don’t know where to start, send me an email and we’ll figure it out together!)
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