The Existential Pancake

The ring light cast an artificial halo around Malcolm’s face as he adjusted the camera angle in his garage. A stack of pancakes sat before him on a chipped blue plate, steam rising like incense. He’d spent three hours arranging this tableau—the vintage wooden table dragged from his dining room, the strategic placement of maple syrup in an artisanal ceramic pitcher, the casual disarray of philosophical texts he’d ordered online and barely skimmed. Kierkegaard propped against a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s. Nietzsche beside a carton of eggs. The camera’s red light blinked on, and Malcolm leaned forward, his expression serene with newfound purpose.

He wore a blue chambray shirt, meticulously wrinkled, and half-moon reading glasses he didn’t need but which lent him the air of someone who might quote Thoreau at inappropriate moments. His hair, slightly more unkempt than during his corporate days, had been artfully tousled with organic sea salt spray purchased from a woman who sold homemade soaps at the farmers’ market.

“The pancake,” Malcolm intoned to his nonexistent audience, “is not merely breakfast. It is the universe in edible form.” He paused, letting the profundity settle. “Consider its journey—from formless liquid to solid mass. From nothing… to something.” He lifted a forkful of pancake, examining it like a scientist with a rare specimen. “When we consume the pancake, we consume possibility itself.”

The first video garnered eleven views—eight from Malcolm himself, checking different devices to ensure it played correctly. The other three included his mother, a bot account hawking cryptocurrency, and a confused viewer who had been searching for actual pancake recipes.

Undeterred, Malcolm recorded seventeen more videos over the next month. “You Are The Syrup, Not The Side Dish” received twenty-six views. “The Zen of Scrambled Eggs” reached forty-two, with two comments (one spam, one asking if he’d ever cooked with turmeric). “Bacon: The Crispy Path to Enlightenment” broke one hundred views after being mistakenly included in a playlist about keto diets.

He experimented with lighting, camera angles, and increasingly elaborate metaphors. His background shifted from garage to kitchen to a corner of his living room draped with thrift store tapestries. His delivery evolved from earnest TEDx-style pontification to something quieter, more intimate—as if sharing secrets with close friends rather than broadcasting to strangers.

The breakthrough came with “The Pancake Paradox,” filmed at dawn with natural light streaming through his kitchen window, illuminating the steam from his coffee cup like morning mist over sacred waters. Malcolm sat silently for a full minute before speaking, then simply stated: “The pancake rises only to fall, yet in its collapse, it achieves its purpose. Are you brave enough to do the same?”

Somehow, this video found its way to a niche corner of the internet where corporate burnouts and spiritual seekers overlapped. Comments accumulated. Subscriptions ticked upward. A self-described “recovering management consultant” emailed to ask if Malcolm accepted disciples.

He didn’t, but the idea took root.

The first Sunday gathering took place in Malcolm’s apartment. Seven strangers brought mimosa ingredients and emotional baggage. Malcolm, unsure what was expected, improvised a ceremony involving pancake flipping as meditation and group recitation of affirmations like “I am neither the butter nor the maple syrup—I am the heat that transforms.”

A woman with prematurely gray hair wept during the pancake flip. A man in his thirties with anxiety eyes confessed he’d been in middle management for eleven years and still didn’t know what “circle back” meant. By the time they left, three hours later, they’d formed a group text called “The Breakfast Club of Enlightenment” and scheduled next Sunday’s “communion.”

Malcolm typed up his pancake insights that night, surprised by how easily the words flowed. Thirty-seven pages of pancake philosophy later, he had the rough draft of what would become “Butter the Self: Breakfast Meditations for the Spiritually Famished.” He printed copies at the local office supply store, spiral-bound with laminated covers featuring a stock photo of sunrise over a plate of pancakes.

The movement grew organically, like sourdough starter in a warm kitchen. Fifteen people at the next gathering. Twenty-three the following week. Malcolm moved the sessions to a community center room that smelled faintly of senior yoga and Boy Scout meetings. The attendees began wearing matching white cotton robes with waffle-textured trim that a follower’s aunt had sewn, each bearing a pancake-shaped patch over the heart.

They developed rituals. The Syrup Pouring, where participants drizzled maple syrup while naming what sweetened their existence. The Egg Cracking, symbolizing necessary destruction before rebirth. The Silent Bite, experiencing the present moment through mindful chewing.

Malcolm started a newsletter—”The Weekly Stack”—filled with breakfast-adjacent philosophy and practical tips for “mindful morning practice.” He advised readers to contemplate the transformative power of heat while waiting for their toast, to see the coffee mug as a vessel of potential energy, to recognize that a broken yolk wasn’t failure but a new form of nourishment.

The influencer found him six months in. She wore expensive athleisure clothing that had never seen a drop of sweat and carried a phone case that cost more than Malcolm’s first car. Her hair was a manufactured shade of blonde that existed nowhere in nature, her eyebrows frozen in permanent surprise by expensive neurotoxins.

“I absolutely adore what you’re doing with breakfast,” she said, filming herself saying it. “So authentic. So now. My followers would eat this up—pun totally intended!”

She misunderstood everything about his philosophy, describing it as “self-care for foodies” and “mindfulness for the morning-challenged.” She posed with his manifesto, holding it next to her face with its title partially obscured. Her caption: “Butter yourself first! This revolutionary self-care guide is everything!”

Malcolm watched in bewildered fascination as her post garnered sixty thousand likes. His website crashed. The community center room could no longer contain the Sunday gatherings. A local news station ran a feature on “The Breakfast Cult Sweeping Through Middle-Class Suburbia.” A publisher emailed about book rights.

Sitting alone at his kitchen table one evening, surrounded by fan mail and requests for interviews, Malcolm stared at a single pancake on his plate. He hadn’t actually eaten one in weeks, too busy being the figurehead of a movement that had overtaken his life.

“The pancake rises only to fall,” he whispered, the words now heavy with unintended prophecy. He prodded it with his fork, watching it yield to pressure, then spring back—resilient in its softness.