Cake is for eating

They say you can't have your cake and eat it too. I think it is intended as a warning against wanting incompatible or impossible things. But how do you know what is really incompatible until you try to reconcile it? How do you know what is really impossible until you try to realize it? And why would you want to have cake anyway? Cake is for eating, for enjoying, for experiencing, not for having.

I am saying this as a reformed cake-haver. When we were younger, someone gave my brother and I these Henry VIII chocolates, packages of individual chocolate bars with wrappers depicting Henry and his wives. My brother ate all of his chocolates right away but I kept mine for months, maybe even years. Long enough so that when I finally gave in and agreed to open them, they were beyond spoiled. I don't know why I was never tempted to eat them. I was weirdly self-disciplined as a child. I just liked having them and reading the stories on the back about each wife's fate. (None of which were very good. I don't know why women kept lining up to marry that dude. You'd think having a penchant for blaming all his problems on you and then beheading you would be a deal-breaker, no matter how many palaces a guy has.) I don't know why it never occurred to me to eat the chocolates and keep the wrappers with the stories on them. Oh well. I think they might have been mint chocolates so it was no big loss that I never got to eat them (mint is for toothpaste, not candy). Though I do regret not taking advantage of the opportunity to bite off chocolate Henry VIII's head. 

Delayed gratification and I are good friends. I'm all for making wise decisions that will lead to future awesomeness. But some things are meant to be enjoyed in the moment and if you wait for a "special" occasion or the "right" time, you might miss out. Life is meant to be lived, inhabited fully, used up. Eat the cake.

Lyric of the moment: "The future is no place to place your better days..."