The Cake Parable

One day, a mother was shopping with her two daughters and had to face a big problem.

In the candy aisle, the girls found only one bar of their favorite chocolate; they started arguing loudly about which one of them should have it. The arguing escalated to yelling; in the blink of an eye, they were crying and causing a scene.

The mother stepped between them, took the chocolate bar, and put it in the cart. She told the two girls to calm down and that they would solve the problem of who would get the chocolate bar when they got home… but only if they behaved well until then.

From that moment on, the girls did everything their mother asked of them. When they got home, they even helped prepare dinner and cleaned the dishes.

While the girls were trying to impress their mother, the mother was trying to find a way to help the girls learn to share. As she prepared dinner, she remembered “The Cake Parable” story she’d heard at a team-building event at work that would be just right.

After dinner and after the dishes were done, the two daughters again started arguing about which one should get the chocolate bar. The mother called them to the table where she was waiting with the chocolate bar.

As the girls sat down, their mother asked them if they had heard the story about “The Cake Parable.” The girls said, “No,” and asked their mother to tell them.

The mother explained, “It’s a story that has a hidden lesson, but what that lesson is, you will have to tell me after you hear the story. The first one to get it right will get the chocolate bar.”

The mother told her story and peeled the wrapping from the chocolate bar.

“Two guys wanted a snack, but it was hard to find a restaurant open late in the evening. They finally found a pastry shop that was about to close. The owner had a policy of selling only fresh pastry, so he always gave away any pastry left at closing.

The two guys looked around, and one of them saw a big, delicious-looking cake. The other guy jumped up and grabbed it. The first guy said it was his cake since he saw it first. The other guy said it was his cake as he picked it up first.”

The mother put the chocolate bar on the cutting board. She then asked the two daughters if that sounded familiar to them, and if either of the two guys were right. The daughters argued about which one was wrong and what should happen next.

The mother calmed the two girls and continued with the parable, “As the two guys were arguing, an older man came by and overheard them fighting over the cake. The man explained that he had a solution to their problem. He told them he could easily divide the cake into two equal shares.

The guys agreed. They handed over the cake and he cut it into two pieces.”

The mother asked her two girls if that would also be an agreeable solution for them. The two girls, like the guys in the story, agreed. So the mother cut the chocolate bar into two pieces. One piece appeared slightly larger than the other.

The mother continued, “As the man cut the two pieces apart, it was apparent they were not the same size. The guys argued about which one should get which piece.”

The older man said, “Oh no! One piece is slightly bigger than the other. Let me take a bite of the bigger one so it will be the same size as the smaller one.”

The man took the bite. As the mother said this, she also took the bigger piece of the chocolate bar and took a bite of it, then continued with the story.

“The older man then saw the mistake he made. ‘Oh no! The other piece is smaller now.’ So the man took a bite of the other piece that was now bigger.”

As the mother was telling this, she did the same with the other half of the chocolate bar. She continued telling the story and doing the same with the chocolate bar as the man did with the cake.

In the attempt to keep everything even, soon there was no chocolate bar left at all!

The two daughters were shocked. How could this have happened right in front of their eyes?

The mother calmly asked the two daughters, “What is the lesson you learned from this story? Do you think the same would have happened if the two guys had not argued and had shared the chocolate bar from the start?”

The two daughters were sad as they realized they were tricked out of their chocolate bar. But both agreed that they were wrong by not sharing the chocolate bar, as it was more than enough for both of them.

The mother was pleased that her two girls learned a valuable lesson, and decided to see if they really had learned it. She pulled a new chocolate bar from her pocket, put it in front of the two girls, and asked them, “Who gets the chocolate bar?”