Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

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Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. How often have I, as a parent, said some sort of iteration of that phrase to my children? Too many to count. I’ve been thinking about this phrase a lot lately. If you’ll humor me, I’d like to explain why I think we as a society could all use a little reminder that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. 

Recently, I dealt with a situation in my personal life. As I was talking about the situation with a friend and expressing my frustration, I commented that I felt like I was living out a real-life hypothetical. I realized the situation I was dealing with was easily summarized as, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. This, in turn, got me wondering, how do we as a society begin to reel in the prominent driving belief that because I can, I will? 

Society in so many ways feels like it is a bubble about to burst from tension and disagreement. It feels like we are at a tipping point. I think of the hypothetical questions I often ask my students in class as we weigh different decisions throughout history, and it often comes down to: just because they could, should they have? How might our debates regarding policy on rights, freedom, and so much more be able to reach some common ground and compromise to move forward with solutions if we would just pause to consider whether we should? 

In a world that has become so “me” focused, have we lost sight of the old adage that just because you can doesn’t mean you should? How much of the hate-filled vitriol online or the efforts to drive views to go viral for showcasing someone at their worst could be avoided if we just remembered that just because you can doesn’t mean you should? How much would the algorithms shift if we paused to consider whether we should repost something just because we can? 

In relationships that have moved more and more online, how much more intentional might we be if, instead of spewing our knee-jerk reaction to people or events by typing words and hitting send? In communication with those in our lives that is now done more through text and email, how many hurtful comments, broken discourse, and severed relationships could have been avoided if we had just remembered that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should? I don’t know the answer, but I think our world would be less overwhelming if we all remembered that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. 

 

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