“Should” is the bad word. Too often it is used to articulate a course of action that is never followed, and then, when it isn’t followed, it becomes the word of choice to express regret. The memoirist Mary Karr, author most recently of Lit about her alcoholism, takes a page out of the AA language of recovery and puts it this way:

It's devilishly easy to imagine yourself making a choice that would have taken you to a different place in your life. I should have married this person; I should have taken that job; I should have moved; I should have blah, blah, blah. This is called "shoulding all over yourself." (Say it aloud and the negative meaning becomes clearer.) Reflecting on our choices is an important way to grow, but you can't live your real life if you're busy living in your "should have" life. You'll end up torturing yourself. Jesus of Nazareth once said you can't serve two masters. You can't live two lives either.

"Shoulding all over yourself." Indeed! You have to love that phrasing. But we should also learn from it. And hence my blog for today.

As long as I was lost in my own head about what to write, as long as I was not writing because I was stuck on the “should” – “shoulding all over myself” – I didn’t write anything. Instead I found myself engaging in classic avoidance behaviors – cleaning an already pretty clean house, cooking “from scratch” the longer recipes, comparing prices of random items in the grocery store, and – drum roll here – watching television. It’s amazing how much time you can waste while you “should have” been doing something else, isn’t it?

Which brings me to my point and to the title of this piece: If we find ourselves “wasting time” by doing anything but what we resolved to do in the New Year, we are breaking the only New Year’s resolution we’ll ever need, which is NO MORE SHOULDING!

We are “shoulding it’ by not doing it now and we are going to be “shoulding it” all over again in a couple of weeks or months or years when look back at the time we had and realize what we “should have” been doing. We are now and we will be again in some future then, “shoulding all over ourselves.” 

Don’t let’s do that, okay? 

*** 

I bet I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that even though, yes, you agree in general with what I’ve written you still want to hang on (if just a little bit) to the freedom to waste time. Or to engage in what the poet Walt Whitman described as the need “to loaf and invite my soul.” Or to just “veg” on the couch with the television on and Facebook on your laptop. Hey, me too! I’m not advocating the wholesale abandonment of that good side of our natural slothiness. Or of giving up whatever form of social networking makes you happy. Or of taking a day or two off just to, well, loaf.

What I am objecting to is bigger than these minor inducements to trade in the busy-ness of everyday life for the occasional nap. I’m talking about not trapping yourself into bad habits and distractions and excuses that take you away from what you really want to do, to be, or to become. I’m talking about the “shoulding” that you already regret.

I cannot tell you how many would-be writers I’ve met whose “shoulding” only allows them a lifetime of “wanting to have written,” and they never do. Or how many of my academic colleagues who really want to write “that book” instead settle for another tame article. Or, ultimately, how sad it is when people I know who, on the occasion of a mutual friend’s death, tell me what our pal “really wanted to do” but never got around to doing … and what hangs over that conversation but is seldom spoken are the words “and now he/she is dead.”

You can “should all over yourself” and then you die. How sad – and how unnecessary – is that?

*** 

I stopped “shoulding” and began writing again. Not just this blog, but also my new book on living a life by and through narratives. And not just the blog or the book but also the introduction to the first book written by former student who is now a good friend.

I am a writer. This is what I do. This is what makes me happy. Writing, in addition to being a rewarding daily engagement with the sacred is what also motivates and enables the life San and I amuse ourselves by calling “grandiose.” We use that term because an old friend once used it to express her dissatisfaction – no, more like incredulity – with our choice to spend a year-long sabbatical traveling through Europe, homeschooling Nic, and to finance it by selling our house and putting our furniture in storage. For her, our plan was “grandiose” because “normal people don’t live this way.” Maybe so, but who wants that kind of narrative crowding out opportunities for adventure in their lives? Not us. 

We did it. We loved it. We wrote about it. We no longer had a “should have” blocking our way.

This year my blog will be about more than my cancer, although from time to time it will be about just that. It will also occasionally be about those older themes that still fascinate me. But moreover it will be about living well and fully without ‘shoulding” and with a clear recognition and acceptance of my own mortality. In this way, cancer reminded me of what was truly important in this life and remission gives us another chance – another perfect opportunity – to do that “grandiose” thing. To write “that book.” To continue to write and to post this blog. And so on. 

*** 

This year I hope you resolve with me to stop “shoulding.” There is no time to waste, my friend, even if you don’t have cancer. More importantly, this is your life – the only one you get here on the blue planet – and you already know how quickly the years pass. There is no time to waste, period. Finally, when it comes down to that one bad word “should,” how about replacing it with a whole new vocabulary of accomplishment? So this time next year you can say “did it” where “should do it” used to be.

I’ll be cheering for you. Like I say (and pardon my grammar), this is the only New Year’s resolution you and me will ever need.