"Should"

Somewhere along the way, my online life went from being something I was doing because I needed to do it in order to stay sane and connected, to being something I was doing because I “should” do it. And that’s a problem, because “should” is an inherently transactional thing which kills a lot of otherwise useful and enjoyable activities. 

That’s where this post could both begin and end, except that I noticed the problem of “should” cropping up in a space that hits a nerve for me. Because I noticed that it is also killing some folk’s personal religious practices, which is a crying shame.

I used to stay after school. I used to stay well past the 3:15pm of my obligatory hours. I used to hang around to chat theory with coworkers and help get kids started in the after school program and tutor a few students in math or science. I didn’t get paid for that. I did it because I liked chatting with my coworkers, because I liked greeting and helping the kids (many of whom were former students that I didn’t get to see during the day).

But at some point, people began to expect that I would be there. The after school teachers (who used my room) would show up late and then insist on talking with me leisurely while they took their time getting set up, needlessly lengthening the process. The counselors started e-mailing and calling and asking “Well, couldn’t you just help this one student in Algebra after school today?” ...this one student, who was often some kid I didn’t really get along with or who was perpetually irresponsible and wouldn’t get there right away, would spend most of the time trying to avoid the tutoring they had been sent to recieve with inane conversation and whining.

Staying after school for even five minutes extra went from something I wanted to do, something I enjoyed doing, to something I “should” do.

And anytime “should” comes into things, it starts to feel like all the transactional things we do as part of society. There are lots of “should”s in the world. We should eat right. We should exercise. We should work hard at our jobs. We should spend time with our children. “Should”s are necessary and important, they have personal and social weight--but that isn’t all they have. They also have clear “whys” attached to them, with benefits and compensation for engaging in them. We gain healthy bodies. We get paid and promoted in our careers. Our children grow up feeling loved and supported. The problem is when we find ourselves living with a “should” that doesn’t have transactional value.

Why should I stay after school? There needs to be some other payoff. I wasn’t staying after because I enjoyed helping coworkers procrastinate or because I wanted to deal with difficult kids for yet another hour of the day, and I wasn’t getting paid to be there. It starts to feel like an obligation--one with no benefit--and it breeds resentment.

The same applies to any activity which inadvertently becomes a “should” when there is no transaction to back it up. And often, the “should” is latently psychological--a trap we unwittingly fall into. I paid $99 for a FitBit Flex pedometer so I could track my daily activity and my sleep cycles. It’s a little bracelet that straps to my wrist and syncs with my phone. It’s nifty and I thought I’d like playing with it. But when I bought it, I didn’t consider the possibility that it would quickly become a “should”.

It came with the advertisement: “Wear it all the time!” It only needed to be charged once a week, and it was waterproof, meaning one could safely put it on and only take it off once a week to charge. Now, wearing a tracker day and night doesn’t sound bad until you actually do it. Once you strap that little bugger to your wrist, and once the shininess of the gadget wears off, you realize what you have actually done--it’s a little manacle of health, always present, always watchful, pretending to be a part of your body. It’s not really a manacle, of course, you can just take it off...but...you paid $99 for it. You really “should” wear it and get your money’s worth…

Suddenly, even as I wear the damn thing I find myself hating it. I eventually reached a point where I took it off as soon as I got back to my apartment every day, my internal dialog going something like this: “Stupid FitBit...you can track my steps if you want to, but I refuse to let you be part of me. I don’t even like you FitBit. I wish I’d never bought you. I wish I didn’t feel obligated to wear you…” and then I had a moment of clarity: Yes, I bought the damn thing, and I could use it how I pleased. Or not use it. Or give it away. Or whatever I wanted. I realized I didn’t “have to” wear my FitBit...no matter how much I had spent on it. Just like I realized one day that I didn’t “have to” stay after school.

And that’s what happens. When you realize a particular “should” doesn’t benefit you, you will eventually remember something all “should”s have in common: they aren’t “have to”s and you can just stop doing them. You take the FitBit off. You stop staying after school.

And we kill our hobbies this way.

“I really should do more writing this week,” we tell ourselves when it’s been a while since we wanted to, unaware that as soon as we say “should” the activity becomes transactional. So many of the things we enjoy doing don’t benefit us beyond our enjoyment of them, so if we press ourselves to do them when we aren’t really feeling it, they become “should”s instead of “want to”s.  And once we utter the word “should” we can no longer see past the transactional.

The words “I should be enjoying this” sound so odd because enjoyment is something which either happens or doesn’t--it can’t be transactional because it can’t be forced. Writing can be a “should” (especially if one is a professional writer, or aspires to be professional) but enjoying writing, writing for fun, can’t ever be a “should”. Just try the phrase: “I should enjoy writing multiple times this week.” You can not schedule enjoyment.

Again, if you’re aiming to be a professional writer, “should” fits here, and you gain the benefit of the transaction when it becomes a “should”--better skills and more potential products to sell to publishers. But if, like me, you are one of those people who does writing not with the expectation of profit but just because you like writing, “should” has no place in it.

My brother had a good example from his life: video games. He has purchase a large number of games. So many that he has started to feel like he “should” play them more. As a consequence, he rarely plays them at all. He told me he sat down one day, determined to “get some gaming in” but the whole time, all he could think about was what else he could be doing and he started to question what benefit, exactly, video games provided him in the first place.

“You enjoy them,” I reminded him.

“Not very often,” he sighed, “I just don’t feel like playing them.”

“Then don’t. Just let them sit there and play them when you do feel like playing them.” he started to protest, reminding me how much money he had spent, and I told him my FitBit story, “You own them so you have the right to play them when you want to. You’ll get back to them eventually and they’ll be there when you want them.”

After all, even I found a use for my FitBit. Whenever my co-workers start in on their infuriating conversations about what fad diets they are doing or what new exercise classes they are paying for and making a show of whatever token thing they are doing to meet the social expectation of “getting healthy” that our school adopted several years ago (and it is token--none of us have lost weight or changed our level of fitness in forever) I flash my pretty FitBit and they all Ooo and Ahh over it and I get a free pass for the rest of the conversation because I get to answer comparatively non-invasive questions about what colors it comes in, whether it’s really waterproof or not, and how comfortable it is to sleep with. The number of times this has played out just in the last month was worth the $99 I paid for the thing.

But as I hinted at before, it isn’t always a matter of money that makes the “should”s show up in places they don’t belong. Sometimes, “should”s appear in places where, on the surface, they make sense but where, depending on the dynamic between the individual and social spheres, they can be counterproductive for everyone involved. I think religion is one of those places. Which brings me to why I’m bothering with all of this. Just as “Should” often kills hobbies, because enjoyment is explicitly non-transactional in this context, “should” also kills other non-transactional things, and since you can probably already see where I’m going with this...disclaimers first:

Religion can be transactional. A lot of people engage in religion because of the transactional benefits of doing so and there is nothing wrong with that. For some people “should”s in religion are not only acceptable, but necessary: We “should” do more praying. We “should” show up to services more regularly. We “should” write more posts on our religious blogs. We “should” make more offerings. We “should” do more religious reading and studying. We “should” meditate more. In the right context, any of these things is useful and valid.

That said, we need to be aware of our “should”s and what benefit we are getting from them, because if we are not getting a benefit, then they cease to be transactional and they become self-defeating. Our motivations for elevating something from a thing we “want to” do to a thing we “should” do need to be clear because there are a few things that we need to be careful not to make the driving force behind that decision. For example, if your “should” isn’t something you reasoned yourself into based on your own personal beliefs and your own personal arrangement with your gods, if your “should” is instead being defined for you by someone who has decided they somehow “know what’s best” for your spiritual practice...well, fuck them. Seriously.

Look: communities have the right to define “should”s for their participants. If your church or coven or temple or whatever has decided that all their members “should” wear purple on Tuesday--that’s an acceptable “should”. It’s the price of membership. If the price of membership is too high, you leave and find a group whose asking price you can accept. But no one, NO ONE, has the right to define a “should” for your personal spirituality or your relationship with your god(s). Spiritual ecstasy and divine communion, like enjoyment, are inherently non-transactional. You can schedule prayer. You can not schedule sincere prayer. If your heart is not in it, your heart is not in it.

This is why I get my panties in a bunch over the whole “daily ritual/daily practice” thing and the fact that a (sometimes very vocal) handful of people out there are suggesting that only “shallow” people don’t put forth the effort to have a daily practice of some sort. I resent the implication that how frequently you show up in shrine has anything to do with how strong your relationship with your deity is. It’s a hurtful and infuriatingly smug thing to insinuate about others. Especially when it’s framed with the “you only kneel before your god when you want something/need something/ have some crisis” line that sometimes accompanies it.

It took me a long time to figure out why this is such a problem. On the surface, logically, I agree. A consistent or constant practice--daily ritual, daily offerings, daily prayer--sure seems like a good way to increase one’s rapport with one’s god(s). And yes, I agree that it seems like an acceptable expectation of a religious adherent. Especially if a religion’s community has defined it as a necessary component of the religion.

But then I think more deeply about it, about what is actually being required here. You mean to tell me that the actions, the day to day going through with the motions, that is what we “should” be doing? That will bring these supposed benefits of deeper relationships with our deity? Really? Even if your heart isn’t in it? Because remember, the actual motions can be a “should” but the sincerity and feeling that are supposed to be behind those motions can’t be forced. You can’t schedule the feelings, you can only schedule the words. So what if you’re just not feeling it? What if you stand in front of the shrine and just can’t make the words you’re saying really mean something? What if you really are just going through the motions?

If you’re doing this daily whatever because someone said you “should” do it, and it doesn’t seem to benefit you because you can’t “feel” it, then it isn’t going to build a relationship. At best it’s just a way to appease one’s religious community. At worst, it’s going to breed resentment. And sooner or later, you remember what all “should”s have in common… shrines collect dust, communities get avoided or lied to, and instead of kneeling occasionally, you don’t kneel at all.

Not being able to make that particular “should” happen doesn’t make you a bad person and it does not make your spirituality any less valid than that of any other person. It doesn’t mean you are defective, or that you procrastinate too much, or that you are irresponsible, or that you are shallow, etc… It just means that for you, daily practice isn’t an appropriate “should”. Don’t let that “should” scare you out of your shrine. Don’t let the social expectations that the “should” is pregnant with devalue your faith.

For some of us, relationship with deity is spontaneous. It comes in moments and flashes. In whispered prayers under cold winter skies and in glasses tilted toward the summer sunset, toasting the heavens. Some of us only find it when we stop looking for it. Some of us only go to shrine, only collapse in front of our statues, when something has gone wrong and we need to go to the one place where They dwell when we are too hurt to sense them in the world. That doesn’t mean we aren’t committed to them. That doesn’t mean we are “shallow” or that we lack “spiritual discipline”.

I’m tired of the shaming going on around this. I’m tired of the notion of “well you can have your spontaneous relationship with deity and still get disciplined about showing up in shrine.” Sort of like you can be both a professional and casual writer at the same time, right? Because the grind of one doesn’t in any way interfere with the wonder and pure joy of the other, right? Because showing up in shrine to say empty words and stare at empty statues couldn’t possibly make you feel like you’ve lost touch with them and leave you too unsure of yourself to let go and be with them in the places where you used to find them, right? How naive.

Is daily practice meaningful for some people? Yes. Is it not as meaningful for others? Yes. Does the existence or lack of daily practice by itself say anything about an individual’s commitment to their gods? Absolutely not. It doesn’t matter if you have a daily practice. It doesn’t matter what timetable your practice runs on. You can make offerings once a day, once a week, once a month, once a year...devotion is not measured in offerings.

Devotion is measured in love, and you can’t schedule love.