I’m a lover of language. Words are my jam, but should is a word I take real umbrage to. It is so unhelpful to us wee humans. Apparently, it’s a ‘modal auxiliary verb’ (obviously) and occupies the same category as words like ‘could’ and ‘must’, but it sits between them like a judgey, smug sibling: full of righteousness and criticism, ready to make you feel guilty for something you haven’t done.
Because what does it even mean? It doesn’t sit in any particular tense, it masquerades as an imperative but it’s not really; it only really appears to criticise. Sometimes it comes after the fact, when you’ve already fallen short of an expectation. Sometimes it appears before, guilting you into doing something you really don’t want to do: you should go for a run even though you’re knackered, you should have been married and procreated by now, you should find a job that earns you lots of money, you should look a certain way in a bikini, you should get on the property ladder, you should enjoy this lifestyle even though you don’t and it’s making you miserable, you shouldn’t cry because you’re a man, you shouldn’t eat that because you should be skinnier. Blah blah blah…
Really, should is just a vague obligation, an objective expectation that is not welcome. Where does this obligation even come from? From whom are these wannabe edicts sent down? It implies that something is unlikely to happen, or that someone doesn’t want to do it. It imparts objectivity to times and places where only subjectivity exists. It places guilt on the should-ee. It implies that if you do not do what the should-er is telling you, you are lazy or wrong or incompetent. Or all three.
Dig deeper, find other reasons to do things. If it’s a resolution to lose weight, consider why you are doing it. If it’s a resolution to be more social, think about how you may gain from that and whether you actually want to spend time on these things. Replace should with other ‘auxiliary modal verbs’ (whatever those are), or phrases like ‘it may be helpful to do X’ or ‘it may make me feel better to do Y’. Even: ‘doing Z may make me happy.’
You may think this is just being super pedantic and the result of overthinking language, but I think it can be helpful when you’re struggling, stressed and anxious. Feeling like you’re falling short of something, that you’re not doing something you should be doing, takes its toll. It exhausting to feel that way and to strive to change when you really don’t want to. Your mind/body system becomes stressed when it feels like it’s not getting something it needs (like a more enjoyable job, more yummy food, more sleep) and objective shoulds are not going to help with that. Odds are, they will compound it and send you off in the wrong direction.
I’m not saying that making changes is a bad thing; sometimes we have to sit within frameworks where should will appear, but perhaps examine whether should is becoming unhelpful and view the parameters of these frameworks as artificial and narrow in application (I think schools are an example of this but that’s a whole different tangent). It’s negative and sends such a reaction through the body, as all negative words do. Shame and guilt are very visceral. We do sometimes need to be disciplined about doing things, but find subjective reasons to embark on them in the first place. Do things for your own reasons and see those shoulds that may arise in certain situations as transient and applicable only in those particular situations. Interrogate it, rephrase it and feel okay is dismissing it as a meaningless word that should be erased from the English language (irony intended).