Sunday, April 18, 2004
Chris Magazine: Things To Make You Smarter
"Having your cake and eating it too." An age old expression. Some claim it to be a valuable life lesson. It's not.
How many times has this line dropped from the lips of someone you know; "well, you can't have your cake and eat it too." This sounds good, but this is a lie. That's right, a lie.
If you have cake, you can go ahead and eat it too. That's the whole point to having cake in the first place. It's like saying, "you can't have a cigarette and smoke it too". You can. In fact there's an expression for that, "smoke 'em if you got 'em". If you have them, then you can have them. It's when you don't have them that it's a problem.
The truth is that someone got the expression wrong. It's backward. It should be, "You can't eat your cake and have it too". You eat it, it's gone. Valuable lesson.
Next time someone uses the expression, stop them. Correct them. Then, they'll be smarter too.
How many times has this line dropped from the lips of someone you know; "well, you can't have your cake and eat it too." This sounds good, but this is a lie. That's right, a lie.
If you have cake, you can go ahead and eat it too. That's the whole point to having cake in the first place. It's like saying, "you can't have a cigarette and smoke it too". You can. In fact there's an expression for that, "smoke 'em if you got 'em". If you have them, then you can have them. It's when you don't have them that it's a problem.
The truth is that someone got the expression wrong. It's backward. It should be, "You can't eat your cake and have it too". You eat it, it's gone. Valuable lesson.
Next time someone uses the expression, stop them. Correct them. Then, they'll be smarter too.
