The Diet Starts Monday
ダイエットは月曜から
Every Friday, Marcus announced that his diet would begin on Monday.
Every Monday, he discovered reasons why Tuesday would in fact be a far more start.
"I'm going to eat better," he told Priya, reaching for his third pastry of the morning.
"Starting when?" she asked, already knowing the answer.
"Monday. Definitely Monday. Unless something comes up."
Something always came up, and its name was usually cake.
As long as there was a birthday somewhere in the office, the diet remained safely .
And in a building of four hundred people, there was always, without fail, a birthday.
"By summer, I'll be a completely different person," Marcus declared each January.
By summer, he was the same person, only very slightly warmer.
His plan was , provided one generously ignored the fact that he never once followed it.
"Tomorrow I start running," he would say, meaning it with all his heart.
Tomorrow, reliably, it would rain, or he would be tired, or the shoes would somehow feel wrong.
Unless the conditions were absolutely perfect, the run simply could not happen.
And the conditions, he had noticed over many years, were never perfect.
Priya gently suggested he might simply start now, with something small.
"Now?" he repeated, as though she had proposed climbing a mountain barefoot.
"One salad," she said. "You could have one salad today. That's all."
Marcus looked at the salad, then at the sandwich beside it, and made his choice.
"As long as I'm being realistic," he reasoned, "I really shouldn't shock my body with sudden change."
The sandwich, it should be noted, did not survive the conversation.
"You're going to feel terrible about this on Monday," Priya warned him.
"On Monday," Marcus said , "I will be an entirely new man."
He genuinely believed it, too, which was somehow the most impressive part of all.
Then he checked his calendar, saw that Monday happened to be a public holiday, and felt a warm wave of pure, .