“Should is a futile word. It’s about what didn’t happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”
~ Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
By NIKI TURNER
Years ago a friend admonished me during one of my self-deprecating diatribes about how I was failing to be “enough” at my assigned roles and tasks.
“Don’t should on yourself,” she said, with a gentle firmness.
I blinked. “What?”
“Stop ‘should-ing’ on yourself.” This time she chuckled. (If you say it fast enough it sounds like something else which is not really suitable for print.)
I’d been should-ing on myself, being should-on by others, and should-ing on unsuspecting friends and family for years. It was normal, even a display of love and concern, to offer unsolicited and well-meaning (if shame-inducing) advice at the drop of a hat. Most of those “shoulds” I received from others were assimilated into my own personal should-ing practice, wherein I convinced myself I was obliged to do something different than what I was doing, no matter what I was doing at the time.
All of the “shoulds” were silently reinforced by social mores, religious beliefs, quasi-authority figures, and shadowy unspoken “rules” leftover from ancestral traditions.
“You should (or should not)…” was a way to keep myself and others in order, under obligation and managed, or so I thought. What shoulds really do is steal motivation, empower guilt and shame, and trap us inside an invisible cage of false expectations.
People who have been should-on (or who are shoulding on themselves) eventually become discouraged and stop wanting to even try. Why bother, they think, when nothing is ever right or good enough to satisfy the hollow echo of “shoulds” reverberating through their minds.
We can stop should-ing on ourselves and others, but it takes some discipline. Shoulds have a taproot a mile long, it seems. Identify the shoulds in your own thinking first. Shoulds that do not have a rational consequence or reward are hollow and unattainable. Those are the shoulds that come cloaked in empty tradition and external perceptions. It’s also worth remembering that the worst should-ers of others are generally those who’ve been should-ed on themselves.
Living without shoulds is freeing, even if you can only manage an hour or two at a time. Suddenly, it’s OK to just be. And when someone comes along and tells you just being isn’t enough and that you should be doing something else, or when a random should echoes through your brain from some old script, steal Cousin Eddy’s line from Christmas Vacation and adapt it to suit: “Sorry, should-er is full.”
Then, without the shoulds, ask yourself what you actually want to do, and do that. (Provided, of course, it’s not harmful to yourself or others.)
By Niki Turner
