Should I?

One of the things that really irritates me about our world is the concept of “should”. And a special shout out to my dear friend FD for raising this subject with me. Our society is obsessed with “should”. We should be more productive. We should work more. We should spend time with our families. We should have hobbies. We should eat healthy. We should exercise. We should get 8 hours of sleep a night. Sometimes I feel like I’m running myself senseless with all these “shoulds”. I just want to be. I don’t want to live my life under constant obligation. Even if these obligations are actually sensible. Yes I know 8 hours of sleep is beneficial for my health. I know eating healthy is sensible. I know exercise is mandatory. I know all these things. But when they become an obligation on me, I begin to get stressed that I can’t keep up. Also somehow they become tied to morals and ethics. And why should any action have morals attached to it. Why am I a morally reprehensible person if I choose to eat KFC? I’m not. And it’s ridiculous. But that’s how it feels. If I don’t exercise and look after myself, it’s somehow tied to my worth as a person. If I don’t work hard, I’m lazy. That’s a moral judgment we’ve made. How has our society constructed itself like this? That decisions we make about the most basic things in life affect our self worth. So if I choose to watch an hour of netflix instead of writing my stupid book, I haven’t valued my time and done something positive with it. If instead of volunteering for a worthy cause, after a long day at work, I come home and crash on the sofa, I’m entitled and privileged and selfish. But what about what we actually want? I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because you know I’m really worried about finding my Purpose. As if having a job that I love, a family that I love, friends that I love and hobbies that I love isn’t enough. But now I have to find a bloody purpose too. So I’ve been soul searching. Trying to figure out what I want to do. And you know what I realized? I want to do nothing. I want to just live my life. I don’t want to do anymore than I already do. It’s not that I’m lazy. Raising two kids and having a job is not lazy. It’s that I’ve been conned into thinking there’s more to life. That I’ve been put on this earth to do great things and if I don’t do them, then I’m not making God happy and I’m lazy. This word lazy – it’s the worst word in our language. I mean talk about pressure. I am so obsessed about not looking lazy that I start attaching morality to my actions and I bring in God. I don’t think God particularly cares about whether I’ve “fulfilled my purpose”. I think God cares about whether I am happy, whether I am loving and kind. Or at least that’s what I imagine God cares about. I really don’t know. I’m not that stupid and arrogant that I actually can profess to know anything about God. So I was scrolling through Facebook, which actually makes me ridiculously happy because it’s such a distraction from life, but has such a profound sense of guilt attached to it because it’s not productive, and I came across this article: Why the Idea of Laziness Is a Lie | Goop. I’m not even embedding it, because it’s such an important article to me that I want you to see the title. And listen, I know Goop is polarizing, but I’ve talked about Goop before and how life changing some of the things have been, so don’t be judgmental dickheads. Ok? Anyway, the point is, we are so full of shoulds, that we genuinely forget that we are allowed to enjoy this life that we’ve been given. We don’t constantly have to pursue the shoulds. We can just watch netflix, chill, eat Doritos and be happy. We still have to work. We still have to exist in this world and make sensible decisions. We’re not allowed to hurt people and do dickhead things. But do we have to imbue our lives with so much misery because we feel obligated? I don’t think so. And I think it’s especially hard for women to not feel pressure and obligations. I mean when you think about the concept of leaning in , it becomes almost impossible to chill. Again, you see we’ve tied in some form or morality to leaning in. Like we have to lean in. In order to meet our potential and fulfill our ambition. We’re never allowed to just be content with what we have. To choose the easier path because it makes us happy. It’s all the bloody shoulds. So what am I going to do about it all? Well for starters, today, I am going to lean in and just watch Valeria on Netflix.