Enjoy the cake!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons | License details Copyright: © Connor Slade

I love muffins - they are like giant versions of the little cupcakes our mother made for us in childhood. All that psychological comfort in an XL size! And the way the top breaks off around the paper case, slightly crunchy with hints of the softness inside. And the feeling of abundance as the soft middle goes on and on.

And, yes, there is some ambivalence around this love of muffins: somewhere around three quarters of the way through, the feeling of fullness has to be pushed away in order to eat all of that XL cupcake; and afterwards, the discomfort of digesting too much cake.

“I have a weakness for muffins,” I confessed to a friend, as we stood in the café queue. I guess as a kind of excuse for wanting to order one with my coffee.

And, bless him, he came straight back with, “In my book, that’s a strength.”

Wow. No one had ever suggested that enjoying cake might be a character strength rather than a flaw. Ridiculous, of course. But his reversal of my words made me see how my words denied a genuine pleasure of such a minor thing in life - a muffin, for goodness sake - and turned it into a character weakness I thoughtlessly spoke against myself.

I’ve come to love reversals as a simple but powerful tool in understanding myself - assisted by The Work of Byron Katie and by Gestalt Therapy (Perls, Hefferline & Goodman, 1951).

Reversals can be made when we take notice of what we say about ourselves, to ourselves and aloud to others: the put-downs, criticisms, angry phrases. Reversals help by keeping us out of the forest of guilt and bad feelings that waits to capture the simplest of pleasures. There lies the danger - not in the muffin, but in the on-going pile of guilt and accusations against the self until we’re afraid to enjoy a simple piece of cake. After all, I can always take the last quarter home for a snack with tomorrow’s coffee. A small additional pleasure, guilt-free.

Adventures in Intuition

Powered by squarespace