There is no "Should"
[cn: some discussion of fatphobia/ transphobia]
There’s something weird many of us do that I’ve been trying to stop myself doing. It’s about the concept of things we Should or Shouldn’t do.
We say it all the time:
“I should exercise.”
”I shouldn’t just sit around all day.”
”I should really start jogging.”
Why do we say it? What are we thinking when we do? Are we saying we want to do something for ourselves? If that’s the case, why don’t we just say that we want to do it?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and it seems to have two main meanings:
“People keep saying this is a Good Thing I should do. I don’t really feel like doing it, but I know I’m ‘supposed’ to.”
“I have a goal I want to achieve, and I need to do this thing in order to achieve that goal, but I don’t feel motivated to do it right now.”
The thing both of them have in common is that they speak to a lack of internal motivation. Many times, it’s a combination of both in some ratio.
This of course makes it a useful sentence to some extent, because it communicates a feeling that we are expected to perform in certain ways, and we don’t really want to. Often, the goal we want to achieve is informed by external pressures (like fatphobia, transphobia, landlords etc) which makes it even harder to figure out the difference between what we want to do and what we feel we are supposed to do or are forced to in the society we inhabit.
In this fatphobic, white supremacist, transphobic, ableist, capitalistic hellscape we live in, there are certain things we are pressured and even forced to do. The more marginalised we are, the more force is applied to those pressures from the outside, often from different directions in contradictory ways. Trans people are pressured to conform to binary gender ideals to be accepted and safe but simultaneously told they are “mimicking” or even making a mockery of gender ideals if they do. Fat people are told to lose weight and exercise while simultaneously suffering abuse when they exist in fitness spaces, not to mention the lack of fitness gear above a UK size 18.
So all this makes it very easy to say “I should do this”, but I want you to know that - really:
The problem with “should” is that it ends there. There’s nowhere to go from “I should do this.” except “I can’t be arsed” or “… I guess I’ll go do it then.” in the huffiest teenager voice. But then we leave ourselves either failing to do what’s “expected” of us, or we do something we don’t really want to do. But what do we do about that?
Here’s what I’m doing:
If I catch myself thinking I should do something, I try to ask myself “Why, though?”
Is there something I need to do because it will help me achieve my goals? Okay, then! Do I want to do it? No? Why not? Is my goal something I don’t really want or is what I’m doing in order to achieve it not something that works for me? Paraphrasing an old idiom, there are many ways to feed a cat.
Sometimes we choose a path not because it’s the right path for us, but because someone said that’s the best route. But they might like different kinds of paths, and their destination is not your destination to begin with!
All right, as an example, here’s a sentence I hear a lot:
“I want to be fitter”
Okay, but what does that mean? There are many ways to be fit.
You wanna be a powerlifting tank? A long distance runner? You wanna be able to do those gravity defying pole tricks? You want to be able to dance all night? The options are endless. We often don’t know the answer to that straight away, or we think we do. I thought I wanted to look like Tyler Durden in Fight Club when I was 20. Now, I just want to be able to move easily and do cool things with a Kettlebell.
Putting “I should…” in front of your sentence just makes it stop. You stop really evaluating what you want and just conclude you don’t really want to do it. It’s annoying to always be questioning yourself and what you want, but it’s frustrating as hell to keep failing to do the things you set out to do and not understand why.
I know this from experience. Having ADHD means spending a lot of time thinking you should be doing things and never getting around to them. I am still working on being kinder to myself about not being the person society wants me to be. I still tell myself I should do things, but I’m getting better at saying “why, though?”
Once we know why we are feeling unmotivated about something, it’s easier to change tack. It’s not about getting out of doing things, it’s about finding things to do that we actually want to do. Because we succeed at nothing if we aren’t internally motivated. Suddenly, we’re not failing at doing something we should, we’re choosing not to do something that won’t serve us.
What’s something you’ve said you “should” do lately? If you question it, do you still feel that way about it? Would you decide to just not do it next time or would you change how you go about it or feel about it?
