The Tao Te King Cakes

I bought a king cake yesterday. And, I always have this problem when I get a king cake: I don’t know where to start cutting it.

Because it is shaped like a circle, there is no beginning or end. Where do you start? You might choose the biggest piece. Or a certain sugar color. Or maybe a piece with icing. Or not.

So I looked at my king cake, and I thought.

I thought about circles. I thought that wherever you start on a circle, you also end. You always wind up where you started.

Then I thought about life. Wherever you were before you were born, you probably go back there when you die.

Then I thought about cycles – how things move in circles and then do it again. I thought about the four seasons. Then the hurricane season.

This led me to think that wherever we are right now, we are somewhere on a circle. If we don’t like where we are, we need to just keep going because we will eventually get back to where we want to be.

This is no great revelation. There is nothing here worth adding to any philosophical debate.

The thing is, before Katrina, I never would have looked at a king cake and then pondered the meaning of life. I would have just thought, “Which piece has the baby?”