“Should” is a shitty word, my therapist used to tell me. She didn't phrase it that way, exactly. I'm paraphrasing. She said it with out the use of obscenities, which is a shame really. For me, an expletive isn't so much an example of profanity as it is a means of emphasizing an idea that needs punctuating. And let's be honest, it's hard to beat anything alliterative.
But I'm already digressing.
"Should" is unhelpful. It’s laden with a false sense of necessity and constraint. It's the unwelcomed pressure of an indebtedness tethered to an ambiguity without a name. That's what makes it as seductive as it is sinister. It's easy to be lulled and lolled into the way life 'should' be. The way you 'should' be living. The kind of work you 'should' be doing. The things you 'should' be making, and the ways you 'should' be making them. It's the feeling of having been measured and found wanting. The passivity of denigration and subservience.
But take a step back and ask yourself, “Should” according to who?
Who the fuck says you ‘should’ be doing this instead of that? Who the fuck says your focus "should" be here instead of there? And who the fuck gave them, whoever they are, that kind of omniscience and authority over what it is you should or shouldn’t do.
"Should" denotes obligation, duty, and responsibility, and no outside force gets a say in that. It’s between the work and you. The point of every creative endeavor is to pay attention to what you pay attention to. You are obligated to be forthright. Duty bound to honesty. You are responsible to the truth of the parts of yourself that you are pursuing.
Your deepest obligation is to the curiosity anchored to your being here. Your only duty is to the nudging wonder within the work that tugs at your every heartstring. Your responsibility is to do the thing that makes your capillaries dance, the thing that makes your soul sing.
Fuck anyone or anything that says it "should" be to the contrary.
In case no one has told you today, I love you with all my everything.
**special thanks to and her post “I sense a shift” for inspiring this writing.
P.S. all the collages featured are available for purchase in my shop.
P.P.S. - I designed a small poster for my upcoming solo exhibition, “Atlas of Elsewhere", at the Bowling Green State University Firelands Campus.
In my years fumbling around, flailing really, as I did my fine arts degree, I made a sculpture piece where I rented the student gallery space and covered the wall in my handwriting of “I should” and “I should not” statements. It was a powerful piece to create. All the statements conflicted with one another. A would be graveyard for the thoughts and forced inner dialogue I had picked up being a woman, with all the intersections of me. To see it and write it and have it witnessed. I wanted to put them to rest. It was a bold first attempt. Yet, at the end of the ceremonial creation, I packed them all back up into my head and carried them for many more years. Some are still echoing inside, and some “shoulds” I have shed and thanked and grieved, some have been thrust with force, some laid down with reverence.
It’s a word that has tendrils…long pathways of ooze. A lot of Shit that is not mine.
Thank you for this piece. It connected to a deep places with curiousity of how much is still there hangjng out, causing shit, being shitty and the need to let that shit go.
Should is a very vicious way to say, you're not enough. I know it well. It can ruin entire lives. Definitely one to work on if it's in your self-narrative