A Saturday Morning Tale About “Can” and “Should” …

Diet - plate and tomato

Just had a relatively relaxed breakfast with my spouse before dropping her at work this pleasant Saturday morning in the Heartland.

I say “Relatively” because we did not have unlimited time and because I could not decide what to order. We are back on a diet which we used with great success last year. Click for the details of the 17-Day Diet, which is rather brutal for the first several weeks, then eases slightly, but continues to cycle between Spartan to Athenian … change is hard.

This diet works great if you are strongly motivated, have a fair amount of will power, and are willing to go to extra lengths to eat only what the diet allows.

Not the easiest thing when you eat in a restaurant …

At one point, I was whining (no other word for it) about the tendency for every menu item to include at least one ingredient I am not supposed to be eating right now, which includes bread, grain, any meat that is not turkey or chicken, dairy products, anything with gluten, anything with sugar, anything with ,,, well, you get the idea.

My wife, growing tired of listening, said “Well, you can eat that if you want.” This, of course, was a signal for me to switch from griping to claiming the moral high ground by saying “I can, but I shouldn’t.“

“I CAN” …

What we are capable are doing.

What we are allowed by laws or social mores to do.

What we can get away with.

What is possible.

“I SHOULD …”

What our moral and ethical values call us to do.

Whatever is the most rational and logical thing to do.

What will help us reach our goals.

What could be.

A question for this weekend morning:

How do YOU discern between what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do?

Let me know your thoughts on this, folks …

By the way, I solved my dilemma by ordering the same thing my wife ordered, exactly the way she ordered it. When it arrived, I found that our orders included one item not on the short list of approved stuff to put into our bodies:)