Big Should-er

A wonderful thing about weekends is that I get to gorge myself on all of the deliciously open time that I have for a couple of days. I spend a lot of time alone, and I spend a decent proportion of my alone time walking -- to the coffee shop, to the grocery store, to the train, or just around the neighborhood, to nowhere in particular. And I find that the solitary walking time is some of my favorite time because I love being out in this great part of the city and the activity and life around me make my mind active and invigorated as well. I'm a natural introvert, so I find that if I've been spending most of my time working or socializing with other people, my nerves start to get frayed, resulting in stress and crankiness. When I get a chance to go for a morning walk after a really socially demanding few days or weeks, my brain just starts to chug through all of the stored-up experiences and thoughts that haven't had a chance to be explored or digested. It's easy for me to lose sight of the broader picture of my life and my emotional path when I'm trying to stay "on" continuously, and it's being alone that so often gives me the ability to piece together the context and themes of my experience.

One of the major themes I've been noticing lately is the dominance of the word "should" in my psyche. I've spent a lot of hours, days, and years agonizing over what I should do with my life. What's the right path so that I make a difference in the world? How can I live morally and do the least harm possible? What more could I be giving to help other people? These are good questions to ask myself, but the extent to which I've made them the central questions to guide my existence and the way in which I've responded to them have constituted a sort of fundamentalism. In some ways I traded one system of "should" -- a conservative religious upbringing in a tiny, traditional Midwestern town -- for another -- a progressive social consciousness in a diverse city. Whatever the ideological system I'm currently espousing, that's what I have let rule me, and I have strived to suppress my own desires in the interest of these beliefs. The thinking has been, what makes me feel entitled to indulge in any way if it is not right and good? And again, it's a good question in some sense -- it's good to be mindful of the impact of my actions. But there's a part that I have always left out of my consideration -- that what makes me happy matters, too. I want other people to be happy and have a strong sense that everyone is entitled to pursue what fulfills them, but somehow in my mind "everyone" has never included me. It was not until my therapist asked me (and this in my first session with her), "Why do you feel guilty for wanting to be happy?" that it occurred to me that in fact, I do feel guilty for wanting anything for myself. Mind you, this guilt hasn't led to me carrying out a flawless and morally pure existence -- it's just made me feel like a bad person for merely being human and having perfectly normal human failings.

In addition to my pervasive sense of guilt, or maybe as a result of it, I also find myself compelled to express myself as directly and honestly as possible and appreciative of people who are forthright. This may not seem like a direct cause-and-effect, but I think these two characteristics are related. A lot of my craving for honesty and directness is derived from a strong desire for outside information as validation of my thoughts and feelings. I am naturally oriented to be a sort of "info sponge", partly because of my love of learning (a positive motive) and partly because of my insecurity (not such a great motive). I don't want to do anything wrong, so I pay attention to people's thoughts and behaviors and use them to gauge what I should do. It seems odd for someone as defiant of norms as I often am to be so concerned with what others think. But I know I don't have all the answers to living figured out (which for some reason I keep mistaking for a personal flaw rather than part of the human condition), so I try to fill in the gaps of my knowledge by having conversations with other people. This is an effective way to learn, to listen to the wisdom (or folly) of others, but I also need to start listening more to myself. Listening inward is a lot more difficult for me than listening outward, but a few months of therapy got me started trying to pick up my own frequency. And I'm learning now that there are a lot more words than "should" in the language of life. Some of my favorites so far are "enjoy", "patience", and "love".