I used to think that if I didn’t *should* all the time, I would do nothing. But the truth of the matter is, if you internalize that sort of message, you wind up doing nothing because it leaches the natural joy from everything. And when you break from it, you tend to walk away from the good and take with you what was bad.

Let me illustrate.

Once upon a time there was a good child who did everything she was told not because she wanted praise, but she wanted peace and to show others that she loved them. But after a while, she got this idea in her head that fulfilling the obligations was the end, not the means, and forgot the REASONS WHY, and thus life became a litany of rules and oppression.

SO she became the bad teen who deliberately did everything she could to go against what she’d been before.

Only to find that she was just as oppressed as before, because she had not the freedom to do what had comforted her when she was a little girl. Not only that, but the life she’d thrust herself into was just as rule-bound as the one she’d left… only everyone kept *saying* they were breaking all the rules. The only rules they were breaking were the ones that kept people at least a bit honest and kind to each other, so the world was not only rules-bound, but lonely, senseless and painful.

This is the story of my life, drastically simplified. In a way, the prodigal daughter. But returning to the old ways did not become freeing until I recognized the damaging effect of shoulds and musts and nevers.

Shoulds are the scourge of the Pharisees. Remember what Jesus thought of them.