The Cake Is A Lie

I’m a gamer.

Have I told you guys that before?
If not, then let me say it proudly now.  I am a gamer.
I’m not the wife who complains about her husband playing too many video games.  I’m the wife who complains because he’s hogging the Playstation when I want to get on.
I’m not the wife who complains about her husband spending too much money at Gamestop.  I’m the wife who’s upset she can’t buy more than two games at a time.

That being said, I’m also a librarian.  So when I find a game that I like, I tend to overdose on it.  I dissect it, pulling out parts that I can study and theorize.  I go into game overload. LOL
This summer, one of those games was Portal 2.

A highly addictive puzzle game, Portal 2 became my LIFE for three weeks until I beat the game.  The idea behind Portal is that a sadistic computer named GLADOS is making you complete these physically and mentally challenging trials all while promising that they are not intended to hurt you, and that at the end of it all, you’ll be given a celebration!   With cake!

You’re to jump through hoops, dodge bullets, evade sentries and even cross fire, with the belief that there will be a cake party for you waiting at the end.  I mean, who wouldn’t endure all for cake?  Who wouldn’t continue to follow directions if they knew there was a chance for reward?

As  the game progresses, however, you begin to find secret messages scrawled around the walls.  They vary from ridiculous random words, to finally one sentence that stands out, “The Cake is a Lie.”  At first, you’re so caught up in completing the puzzles, that you can’t understand what it means.  Then it dawns on you.

The cake is a lie.  This evil supercomputer has you risking your life…just for sport.  She has no cake for you.  You could die, trying to “win”, and it wouldn’t matter because there is no “winning”.

How many times have you had an “I did everything right” moment?
I’m on moment 21 of just this week.

I was upset about my health and my dreams, and feeling very much cheated.

Not that life isn’t pretty good on the whole.  And not that God hasn’t blessed me with more than I’d imagined.  No, the truth is that He has and it is.

What frustrates me to no end is the fact that those blessings are all happenstance for the most part.

“Go to school to get a good job”, isn’t quite as accurate these days.

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes babies”…we’ve learned is also equal to b.s. at times.

1+1 does not always equal 2.

The cake is a lie.

And it hurts.

And to tell the truth, I don’t think it hurts because we really wanted the promised results.  I believe what hurts is feeling as though our control was false.  Our power in the situation never really existed.   I think we aren’t even mad that we were lied to, but because we believed so strongly that eventually we were lying to ourselves.

You can do everything “right”.

You can find the partner, fall in love, get married, buy the house, and still not have the home you imagined.

You can get the grades, get into the school, attain the degree, and still be on the unemployment line.

This is true.

And yes, it sucks.

BUT,

You can also be in the wrong place at the right time and walk away with a friend you didn’t know you needed.

You can start a blog about your greatest pain and meet a horde of inspiring people you never would have known otherwise.

You can chart and plan, only to find that you were meant to be the adoptive parent some child needed.

You can get a life you never imagined, even when you don’t get the life you dreamed of.

The cake is a lie.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Grab a spoon.  I’m hoping you get your slice real soon.

photo credit: savit keawtavee