My “get out of shoulds” pass…

What is it about rain that removes the onus from doing something, AKA, “I should.” Ah, it’s dark outside, I can hear the rain increasing and decreasing, but constant. And I’m relaxed. Yes, I have a list of things to do, but somehow they’ve moved to the back burner.

There’s a freedom inherent in rain. A settling in. A reprieve from doing. A rare reprieve… or perhaps I should say a rare reprieve from my own shoulds. Rain is a “get out of shoulds pass.” (Maybe I should move to Seattle?)

I was born with an over-developed sense of “should.” In quiet moments (nothing on my to-do list) and those times with obstructive weather outside, I’m relaxed, calm, usually happily reading something, generally news or non-fiction.

About the non-fiction skew, a relatively recent one. For many years, I’d place myself among the readers of serial literate mysteries, engaging and well-written.

And-then-something-changed.

In approximately 2015-2016, our national dialogue headed toward the Mt. Vesuvius of incivility. I abruptly turned off my long-running faucet of literate mystery reading and dived into books and articles exploring the philosophy and practicalities of peacemaking and civility. Hours of the day filled with these thoughtful and challenging readings, trying to understand and learn from them…

My initial intent was to create an experiential online workshop with a focus on sparking our humanity in the face of cesspool-like dialogues among our national citizenry. Great idea. Excited. Had a colleague with whom I was in cahoots and…….it never got off the ground for any number of reasons (and the details matter not.) Retrospectively, I look back at all my saved digital civility documents - piles and piles of them. Oh, and the books, Kindle, and otherwise, can also be characterized in the “piles” category. Whew. Serious whew.

BUT, in this period of time, something changed in me as well, workshop or no. My capacity to sit back and dive deep into hours of reading fiction - disappeared (mostly.) Shouldn’t I be doing something more worthwhile?

Worthwhile, worthwhile? What the heck? Oh, wow, I could take a major dive into semantics while parsing worthwhile. But I won’t since that would be eminently boring and I like keeping you as readers 😉. Maybe I could just ask myself “what does “worthwhile“ mean to me?” (I think I hate this question…)

Impacting the world.

Eh? Impacting-the-world? (You don’t ask a lot, do you, Jan?) What if my experience of feeling fully alive (or darn close), in each moment, does impact the world? BUT what if I can’t perceive causal and concrete changes influenced by my being as aware as I can in each moment? Wait, wait, this sounds familiar. Are we talking about the butterfly effect? You know, a butterfly (moi) flaps it’s wings in North Carolina which, later, precipitates a storm in Oklahoma? But that concept is not a reality (is it?), although the very idea fills me with joy.

“The Butterfly effect metaphor is simply meant to demonstrate that little insignificant events can lead to significant results over time. Often called Chaos Theory, it teaches that we should come to expect the unexpected.” (Aren’t you glad you asked?)

I love this! Coming to “expect the unexpected” helps lift the “shoulds baggage” from my life. If I don’t know what to expect then I can be as awake as I am possibly able, but without the causal albatross of “What’s the outcome?” I am simply responsible for being present, as beneficently as I can, trusting that the unseen (by me, at least) may be an outcome about which I’ll never know. Beneficently would be inclusive of self-compassion, teaching me how I treat myself inwardly can become a template for similar action in the world. Always trusting, “expecting the unexpected,” even if I never see it.

OK, OK, this has really gone on long enough. I’m turning to Douglas Steere, a Quaker author and philosopher, to wrap things up:

“The mysterious thing of it all is that there are no 'little' things. Everything matters and everything leads to something else."  

~ Douglas V. Steere: Quaker philosophy professor

Ah, the rain is beginning to fall again….

❤️Enjoy reading “This Being Human Thing?” Please consider sharing with others. Who couldn’t use more heart and humo