THE AGONY CUPCAKE

This is the cupcake that was in your head, as opposed to the one you 
actually got.

This is the cupcake in the window, when your pockets are empty.  This is 
the anticipation of the thing -- the liar and the cheat.  And you are 
its ally.

What a thing IS, is not what we EXPECT.  What we EXPECT is something 
fanciful.  It may, indeed, be close to our vision, or even right on 
target -- but it's not real, and deserves no loyalty.  When we confuse 
the reality of a thing with the illusion we once had of it, we are in 
pain.  But the problem isn't with what we have: what we have is real and 
can be manipulated or changed or exchanged for something closer to the 
vision...or accepted for what it is.  By taking action with (or against) 
the reality of a thing, we can alter the basic structure of it.  Change 
its form or function or purpose.  If we change the fantasy, though, -- 
alter it in any way and for any reason -- it still remains a fantasy.  
The vision does not imbue the real thing with purpose or value.  It can 
only be lamented, or studied with precious time, or sheened with a 
validation as fantastic as the dream itself.  It can only serve to cast 
a shadow upon the reality.  In this way, the fantastic trumps the real, 
and the imaginary perfection of our pastry anticipation acts as the 
judge arbiter of our reality.

You can look at the situation you're in, at the people who surround you, 
and remember a time (if anticipation played any part in their entrances 
into your life) when they were all illusory, either in part or in whole.  
A time when these people and things resided in your head, to one degree 
or another, and not in your life.  Perhaps the illusion was worse than 
the reality it promised.  Perhaps it was better.  Either way, it lied to 
you.  It stole away your precious attention, and took up emotional real 
estate in your heart.  Likely, the reality of the things is different 
than the imaginary states they once held.  And this difference is what 
matters.  It is all that matters.

Stripping AWAY the illusion isn't an answer, but neutering it is.  It 
should have a voice, because it allows you to plan in advance and decide 
upon courses of action.  It is not an end goal, though, not the final 
version of the thing.  It is only a blueprint -- a plan from which to 
work.  The alternative is a reality that must live up to a fantasy, and 
that is a doomed cause.

Those people and things that disappoint us -- they do so because we 
believe they should be different than they are.  We believe they should 
be like a version of themselves we have in our imaginations.  We wish 
for the fantasy, not the reality with which we are seemingly stuck.  But 
reality is the only thing that matters, because it is the only thing we 
can hope to manipulate with a positive outcome.  Changing the dream to 
match the reality is as illusory as expecting a tangible thing, with a 
nearly infinite number of variables, to somehow match the fantasy we 
constructed to our precise specifications.  It is a fancy composed of 
thought and hope.  Its only purpose in the real world is to help in the 
making of plans and strategies that see to an end.

In our minds, in the expensive glass case, the cupcake is perfect.  It 
is everything we could ever want.  The cupcake we end up with, though 
(especially if it is, in fact, NONE), will certainly be different.  It 
will be better, or it will be worse, or we will sell ourselves on the 
idea that we got exactly what we wanted.  But if that's the case, we 
wanted a dream.  And dreams are for sleeping, not for snacking.

Sunday, January 27, 2013
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