Is this a real thing?!!
Either way, it’s a philosophy to which I sincerely subscribe.
See, a while back, my friend gave me the Out of This World Carmen Sandiego album as a gag gift. One of the songs included is actually called “Cake for Breakfast.” It’s a jaunty tune that riffs on the idea that all kids secretly want to eat cake for breakfast. The song takes place in the head of a person who is dreaming about the pieces of leftover birthday cake that remain in his refrigerator. (Link to song by clicking sample lyrics below)
Can you live your life completely?
Can you do it, wild and sweetly?
Can you dream about cake for breakfast?
Two big pieces just for me.
Although I might be digging a bit for the meaning, I think that the song can be read as something more than an endorsement of confectionery consumption.
The idea is that “cake for breakfast” is not just a sweet indulgence that we can occasionally engage in, but an ideal to which we can strive. You dream about eating cake for breakfast because it challenges the status quo. It’s a violation of one of the standards set by the authority most of us come to know first in our young lives: “Mother”.
“Cake for breakfast” isn’t just unusual, it’s unorthodox! Symbolically, it verges on the heretical. And yet, it’s so easy a rule to overthrow, so easy a desire to satiate (it’s not cocaine, people) and it’s so liberating to do just once in your life. It makes you wonder what the big deal was in the first place. That’s because the admonishment, the guilt, the conflict, the confusion…they don’t exist in reality so much as they abide in your head.
Dreaming about “cake for breakfast” means that your willing to dare yourself to do what you previously thought was impossible. It means that you’re not afraid to visualize a life that departs from your current reality. Better than that, it’s realizing how easy a goal like “cake for breakfast” is to achieve once you silence your inhibitions / your self-doubt / your inner critics… and just REACH for your f*cking dreams already.
(via abundleofletters)
