Visualize a triple layered cake of your favorite flavor. Before you cut into this beautiful domed treat, your taste buds are already hard at work, stimulating your sugary desire. This is the perfect moment. No guilt. No calories. No disappointment. So you savor this dreamlike moment just before you change it all by sliding a very sharp knife deeply into the center, easily cutting through the layers. And then again, completing that familiar wedge-shaped slice bringing you closer to the first anxiously anticipated bite.
Now on your plate, exposing the layers of color and texture, every inch promising delight, you carve an arc of pleasure with your fork, pulling it away from the slice and into your mouth. Oh, such delight and pleasure, literally melting in your mouth, not much chewing required. If you can, you exercise control, taking bite by bite, slowly savoring the succulent perfection until the final bits are smashed together with your fork. You did it. You loved it and now you should sit back, pour freshly brewed coffee and wash it all down sip by sip.
As in life, eating sumptuous, triple-layered cake demands discipline and restraint to be fully enjoyed. Once eaten, the first slice seems to be just a bit short of complete satisfaction. If only, you think, just one more taste…a few carefully consumed bites should do it…you’ll just have another small portion and call it good. Finished for now. Save the rest for later. Parse it out over time.
Then something happens. Something, if you’d admit to it, that could have been prevented. Instead of covering the cake, walking away to recall the tasty treat, you give in. The greed takes over. You quickly slice another piece–and not a miserly half-piece, a full-fledged, over-indulging piece of triple-layered cake, now waiting for you fully exposed on your dessert plate. Eat me now!
Unlike the first piece, this one demands to be eaten with gusto before you come to your senses and stop. Tear at the layers, rip them away from the whole. Eat quickly, don’t stop. Shove it in, all of it. Pay no attention to your body that tells you it is full. Take this slice and enjoy it because you will devour all of it.
Then, afterwards, sitting stuffed, unsnapping a button or two on those too-tight trousers, you wake from the hypnotic, self-indulgent greed-induced experience, wishing you had resisted the second slice and remained guilt free. But you didn’t. You gave in and instead of relaxing in peace, smacking your lips with pleasure, you are wallowing in the aftermath of greedy consumption, taking more than your share and certainly more than your need.
Funny how eating too much cake can be just like demanding too much from life. Taking more than you need even when that little inner voice warned you to stop.
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