The Hidden Anxiety of "Should"

On tuning into our internalized obligations and the fears they reveal.

Auguste Renoir, “Landscape Between Storms,” 1874/1875, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

Lately, I’ve been trying to actually get up when my alarm goes off to make more time to write.

Early mornings are often the best time for this - I sit at the banquette in the kitchen, steam curlicuing off my coffee, and try to get my fingers moving while the sky brightens behind the white oak trees in the backyard.

But right now, I don’t have a specific writing project, and without something specific to work on, getting up early feels a lot harder. The past few days, I’ve noticed a nagging thought: I should be writing more.

It doesn’t arrive as a full sentence, just an ambient sense that something isn’t happening that ought to be. That I’m missing something. That I’m falling behind.

And when I do sit down to write, that feeling shifts - not necessarily because I produce anything interesting, but because I am at least doing the thing. I’m doing, in some way, what I should be doing.

Now, as long-time readers of this newsletter know, I am primed to hear the word should and want to ask questions. I wonder about the deeper work that this modal verb is doing. As I’ve written elsewhere:

The word “should” indicates a certain obligation or sense of correctness, usually in a critical way. So, when should starts steering your thinking, you’re assuming that there is a correct way to do things, that you have a duty to do things in a certain way, and that doing them differently is representative of some sort of inadequacy or less than desirable action on your part.

The thought occurred to me recently that I don’t actually feel obligated to write, so why do I feel like I should?

Maybe I’m less motivated-to-write exactly, and more motivated-to-not-not-write. Maybe in my mind, not writing means something bad that I’m trying to avoid. Falling behind? Losing momentum? That if I don’t do the thing I’ll get stuck?

Maybe “should” isn’t just about obligation. Maybe it’s a signal of fear.

I’ve noticed this same pattern in conversations with others.

Someone will be talking about their work or life, tossing around ideas, exploring possibilities and then suddenly - almost like they’ve backed themselves into a corner - they’ll pause, and say: “Really, what I should do is…”

And then comes some clear course of action, insight into the knotty situation, or an idea for how to accomplish a goal.

I find this moment fascinating because it usually comes at the end of a train of thought, as if all other options have been exhausted and only The Should remains. And every time I hear it, I want to ask:

• Who told you that’s what you should do?

• Does it actually feel right to you, or is it just the path that feels obvious or most reasonable?

• What is that should trying to teach you?

I wonder if our shoulds are less about our obligations and more about our anxieties - about what we fear will happen if we don’t do the thing we think we should.

Instead of letting that script play out, what if we paused in these moments? What if, the next time you felt the pull of what you should do, you asked yourself: What am I afraid of here?

Because maybe the more useful insight is not what we think we should do, but what we fear might happen if we don’t.

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