I was talking with a friend yesterday and three times in our short conversation, he said “You should…” do this, do that. He said it as if it were a given how I should live my life.
But “Should” is not a given. It is always conditional on an If. “If you desire this, then you should do that.” There are no automatic Shoulds. Should is a cause, the If is the effect. If you don’t want the effect, don’t implement the cause.
There are a number of common If-Should errors:
* Voicing a Should with no If stated.
* Assuming an If that isn’t or may not be true.
You should not steal.
Assuming what If?
If you want to be moral.
Maybe I don’t.
* Advising an erroneous Should.
If you want to be rich, you should work hard.
Not necessarily so. You can become rich by being smart, not
working hard.
When I was talking with my friend, I thought of some of the words from Frankie Laine’s popular hit song, “Rawhide”:
“Don’t try to understand ‘em,
Just rope and throw and brand ‘em”.
Laine was singing about cattle. But that is what the human version is designed to do.
“Do all the Shoulds and be branded and accepted by society as a part of the stampeding herd...or be branded a maverick, an outcast”
We should all want that, shouldn’t we?
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