What If There is No “Should”?

What if “should” is one of the biggest causes of suffering?

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I’ve been reading Byron Katie’s Loving What Is. Although this was brought to my attention by Jen Sincero in her brilliant book, You Are a Badass — which I read for the first time some 5+ years ago — I only recently got around to reading it.

I’m about halfway through it thus far. But a recurrent theme has created a new question in my head that Katie’s process, called “The Work”, brings out.

What if there is no “should”?

What does that mean? A great many of the things that frustrate me tend to revolve around the word “should”. For example, I should be making more money, I should be doing more of ‘x’, I should be better with ‘y’, I should be more consistent with my diet and exercise, and so on.

All of the above are valid things that are part of my life experience. But what Katie expounds on in Loving What Is is that these things that “should” be, aren’t.

Put simply — should is not what is.

There are so very many “shoulds” in the world today that most of us can point to. It’s easy to say what should be — and completely ignore or disregard what is.