“Love is always harder,” Della says. As I’ve worked on this play, I’ve been forced to look at how often, when confronted with someone who has drastically different political views than me, my first instinct is…well, the opposite of love. It is indeed much easier if I can dismiss them as someone who is not worthy of my understanding—someone whose views are so wrong, unjust or bigoted that there is zero value in me trying to comprehend where they’re coming from. But we all know deep down that it’s never that clear cut. What happens if that person with the infuriating politics is your neighbor who also is dependable and kind, or your best friend from high school, or your mom? One of my favorite things about The Cake is that it’s so clear that Della is good to her core. She’s doing her very best to do what she has been taught is right. Maybe you disagree with what she’s been taught; I certainly do, but I can’t deny that her striving to “follow the directions” makes sense to me. I, too, am trying to do the right thing, based on the values I hold dear.
I grew up in a town in southeastern Indiana that was 1.48 sq miles with a population of 1,688. I know plenty of Dellas and Tims, and they know me in ways that someone I met in adulthood never can. Despite that, after I moved away for college and then on to the “big city,” I developed a disdain and cool condescension for the people with whom I grew up. I’m rather ashamed to say that it’s only in recent years that I’ve realized that my assumption of small minds and small hearts in the people who hosted my slumber parties, saw me through my awkward adolescence and stood next to me at my graduation is more of a reflection of me than it is of them. People aren’t so simple. They can hold many truths at once, and my view of them, ironically, has at times been as bigoted as the views for which I was condemning them.
The thing about love is that it can exist in spite of all logical divisions. Real love requires us to embrace someone’s brokenness as much as their brilliance, and it allows space for mistakes and messiness and ultimately, if we’re lucky, growth. Della’s right, it’s far from easy; but isn’t that the point? Della quotes the I Corinthians verses on love in the play, but she stops short of a few verses that seem to resonate awfully loudly at this moment in our very polarized world: “Love does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
The Cake is full of love, in all of its complexities, contradictions, comforts, and hopes. To me, that’s maybe just the medicine we all need right now.