I CAN’T

I rarely use this word anymore.  So long as I am not in jail, it would rarely apply to my daily life.

There are of course a few exceptions.  If someone asked me to dunk a basketball, it would be true if I said "I can't."

But if someone says, "how about join me for lunch" and I say "I can't,". Well that's not true, unless I am in jail.

So why do folks use the word can't when it’s not true?  I think its to try to hide the fact that they are making a choice NOT to do something. Instead of saying " No Bob, instead of having lunch with you, I am going to go see Helen," we say " I can't..."

And we have so conditioned ourselves to this lie, that we end buying each other’s bullshit.  It keeps us emotionally safe.  But what are the prices we pay?  First, we don’t really know each other as well as we could when we are not honest.  Second,  we begin to actually BELIEVE we are not at choice about things in our lives, when in fact we ARE at choice.  And THAT is a very big price to pay for this lie.

And even as to things like my dunking a basketball example of “exceptions,” there is real danger in allowing such exceptions. This is so because so long as I THINK I cannot do something, I will absolutely be right about that.  I will certainly never achieve something I think I can’t do.  Hell maybe I COULD dunk a basketball one day if I were willing to pay the prices of weight loss, and the workouts I would need to do to build the leg strength necessary to accomplish that.  So an honest view of that “exception”  would be, “I do not choose to pay the prices I would need to pay in order to dunk a basketball.”