"You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat it Too."

Oh, the popular phrase: "You can't have your cake and eat it too." It never made sense to me. I would hear characters recite this line in movies and T.V. shows growing up, but never understood how it applied to real life. If you had your cake, you ate it, right?

Wrong. The proverb has nothing to do with literally consuming a slice of cake, a whole cake, or even a thousand mini cakes! I have discovered this within numerous figures that took part in my life. Who, you might ask? Condescending adults, religious individuals and romantic partners, just to name a few.

When you were a child, did you ever find it laughable that adults would expect you to get good grades, know a lot about the rights and wrongs of sexuality, drugs, alcohol, etc, but also degrade and insult you as if you didn't know anything because of how "young" you were? Now that's an example of the infamous proverb! You cannot hold intelligent discussion with a teen or try to defend your opinion on a topic, expecting them to know about everything you're talking about, yet at the same time, hold the standard that teenagers know absolutely nothing or are all the same, naive individuals.

Have you ever held a humorously ignorant conversation with someone of religious faith? Perhaps specifically Christians, such as in my case(s) of this incident. I have spoken to many anti-LGBTQ Christians, and I find that I hear the same famous phrase each time: "We totally accept gays, we just don't approve of them." How can you accept homosexuality and call the individuals "normal", while you don't approve of their sexuality, because it is "abnormal"? Sketchy.

Now, in terms of romantic partners, I would not claim the incidents to be provoked through ignorance, rather than mere foolishness. In this case, you usually don't know you are living out the mentioned proverb, but subconsciously applying it! I have been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and wore it out. I find this occurrence between romantic couples in situations such as the topic of friends. People want their boyfriends and girlfriends to have close friends of the opposite sex, (or same sex, depending upon sexual preference) but get upset if they are spending time with those friends because they are "cheating" or being "disloyal", etc.

Another popular occurrence involves every day people that claim they "just want honesty!" Perhaps they do, as every average human being, but they push what becomes their contradiction a bit too far. I find that many people are hurt after they plead for the truth, and that is a shame. Truth hurts.

I challenge you to think about the proverb, "You can't have your cake and eat it too.", and finalize your belief/definition, if you haven't already!