The Shoulds and the Musts and the Whys and the Cants

Life is meant to be taken very seriously. It’s hard. It’s dangerous. It’s unpredictable. And there’s never, ever enough to go around.

Is that right?

Of course not. Unless you think it is. In which case, as with most things, your mind will create your reality, and that’s where you’ll sit, squarely, surrounded by your friends fear and lack along with the neighborhood bully, mistrust. He thrills at boxing out anyone who’s not quite like him, while the others circle their wagons, squaring their shoulders to fend off the intruder and protect the clan.

It’s all done in the name of love, you know, so you can imagine it might be confusing for a small, quiet bespectacled girl who adored books and nature and daydreams and knew even then there was something more to this journey than men at the helm and women in the kitchen and all of them in the pews, together, each Sunday and sometimes more, arms raised in supplication asking God to defend the status quo and have mercy on these broken souls.

Confusing? Spoiler alert: it was.

My schoolteacher parents taught me to value learning in all its forms. Always an excellent student, I took their instruction to heart. I began to read when I was two years old. I did well in the classroom. And I internalized the shoulds and the musts and the whys and the can’ts, the guardrails my family and religious upbringing instilled around me – around all of us – to keep us in line, to ensure our safety, to control the narrative, and to preserve a narrowly defined comfort zone.

I’ve spent most of my adulthood trying to unlearn those particular lessons. My brain is willing, my wounded bits less so. I know the stories I tell myself are just that, and I’m free to write a whole new chapter or ten if I like. I catch myself, hands clenched, shoulders tight, afraid that my words don’t matter and it’s all for nothing, anyway.

And then I exhale, low and long, and remember what draws me to the page. There’s magic that happens whenever I allow myself to relax and play. There’s joy that flows simply from doing what makes me sparkle. There’s liberation that results from letting judgment and limiting beliefs fall away. And that, for today, is enough.