The Shoulds

Are you familiar with the 'shoulds'? I SHOULD be a better... I SHOULD spend more time doing...

You can listen to this newsletter. Here you’ll also find bonus content such as recommendations of the best thing I’ve found on Substack this week.

Are you familiar with ‘the shoulds’? I should be a better … I should spend more time doing …. I should do ….

I think many of us are plagued by the shoulds. I know I am. ¹

I have a confession to make. When I wandered into retirement 3 years ago, I pretty much thought I had things figured out. I knew who I was. I knew what mattered to me. And I felt like I had gained a fair bit of wisdom over the course of my life.

I was clear on my values. And I assumed that would provide me with a bit of certainty.

Wrong.

I don’t know if it was leaving employment and my community. I don’t know if it is the ‘change of life’. I don’t know if it is a full blown midlife crisis.

The only thing I do know for sure, now, is that I don’t have a clue.

As you can imagine, all this cluelessness has turned my ‘shoulds’ completely up-side down.

When you retire, your schedule opens up, and each day is filled with choices about how you will spend that time. One naturally assumes that all those things you told yourself you ‘should’ do while working, but didn’t do because you were busy, will now rise to the top.

You’ll make more elaborate meals, you’ll never forget a birthday, you’ll have cleaner floors. You ‘should’ be able to do these things. You have all this extra time.

What I’ve realized is that the ‘should’ of it all hasn’t made it any more likely that it will actually happen. It just made me feel guilty.

And with all this extra time, my schedule was wide open for feelings of guilt.

One year into retirement I heard a recommendation for the book ‘How to Keep House While Drowning’ by KC Davis. This felt way over the top for me. I’m clearly not drowning. But I read it anyway.

I won’t say the book changed my life, but it has sparked a two-year long conversation with myself about ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’.

Musts are the things we do to stay alive (not drown). There is little we can do about these things other than to make the ‘musts’ as easy on ourselves as possible, in those times when even the ‘musts’ seem like too much.

The ‘shoulds’? Well, the whole story is in the name. These are things that some external force is telling you to do. These are things that are clearly somewhat optional or there would be no debate about them.

This is the sticky bit of life where guilt and reproach can seep in.

I should do thing Y, while I sit on the couch not doing thing Y. Another thing to feel terrible about.

At the time I read this book I was 55. I was writing things in my journal like ‘you are 55! Get it together!’ I was getting pretty good at harshly admonishing myself for not doing the ‘shoulds’.

But it didn’t make things any better. In fact, it made them worse.

How to Keep House While Drowning allowed me to see that I was not going to guilt myself into a cleaner house. In the end, I would have to decide what I was actually going to do; what I needed to do, or what I chose to do.

It was time to change my language.

Today I choose to write this piece about musts and shoulds, because I need a refresher. I have some choices I need to make, and this helps to guide me.

Some would say that I should clean the floor. My answer to that is ‘if you live here, you know where the cleaning supplies are’. If you don’t? My house/my rules.

Is this really about cleaning my house? No.

It’s actually about using the precious time I have on earth to make the life that works for me. To do what I need to do. To do what I choose to do.

My life/my rules.

Here’s another thing I’ve been working on…

I just finished this very excellent book by Beth Kempton, and I’ve now joined her 36-day deep journalling adventure inspired by Kokoro: Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived.

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In case you missed it…

Thank you for being here.

I hope you find something in this JUMBLE of sea glass that interests you, amuses you, or maybe even inspires.

JL Orr

Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada

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Did you listen to Jumble of Sea Glass this week? Here are the links I promised.

Watching Autumn Leaves Fly by Amy Hoppock • Jenny O'Connell • Lucy Worsley

Curious? You can find bonus content, like extra recommendations, in the audio version of this newsletter.

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Here’s a little something for the readers out there…

I’ve had another excellent month of reading, and I’m happy to say that many of the recommendations have come from fellow Substackers, or are written by fellow Substackers. Here’s what I read or listened to in chronological order.

Bittersweet: How sorrow and longing make us whole by Susan Cain on audio (this was recommended by Claire Polders. Thanks Claire!)*
Free Ride by Noraly Schoenmaker — find out more here.
Don’t Lick the Minivan: And other things I never thought I’d say to my kids by one of my favourite Substackers Leanne Shirtliffe of Chasing Wonder. This book had me gaffawing and wincing all at once. It reminded me of those crazy (and I do mean crazy) days of early child rearing. Leanne has a wicked sense of humour and razor sharp wit. I’ll read anything she writes!
Kokoro: Japanese wisdom for a life well lived by Beth Kempton (see above)
Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain on audio*
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry — this one has been recommended so many times by Anne Bogel of What Should I Read Next that I just had to pick it up.
Life in Three Dimensions: How curiosity, exploration and experience make a fuller, better life by Shigehiro Oishi on audio (another Claire Polders’ recommendation!)*
America, América: A new history of the new world by Greg Grandin
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

*Watch for a future post called Voices in my Head for my thoughts on the 3 audiobooks I listened to this month

And here’s what is up next on my TBR (to be read list)

1. How the Light Gets In by Joyce Maynard

2. Lenny by Laura McVeigh

3. Wintering by Katherine May

What is next for you? What have you read that you would recommend? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

1. the more I write the word ‘should’ the weirder it looks. Are you with me? Maybe it is because shoulds isn’t actually a word, but it *should* be.