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From Should to Would
by Alan Cohen
My eight-year-old neighbor Mark keeps me on my toes. Mark asks lots of
questions, which I am sometimes tempted to dismiss as childish. But when I think
about them, I usually discover a profound lesson.
The other day Mark asked me for a ride to the local grocery store so he
could buy some popcorn (he would live on popcorn if his mother let him). I told
Mark I could drive him there, but since I was going on into town, he would have
to walk back, a short hike he often takes.
Then Mark asked me, "What do you think? Should I go with you?"
"Whatever you like, Mark," I told him. "It’s up to you."
"But what do you think I should do?" he asked again.
I thought about it for a moment, and I realized there was no "should"
about it. My opinion of what he should do was irrelevant. His decision depended
entirely on what he felt like doing.
"Do whatever you would like," I told him. "If you want to go, I’ll be
happy to drive you. If you don’t feel like going, you can stay home and play
video games or whatever you like. It’s up to you."
This process went on for a few more rounds, until I was ready to leave.
Then Mark announced, "Okay, I’ll go!" and he jumped into the car with me.
After I dropped Mark off, I realized he was mirroring a part of myself
that tries to find out what I should do, when there is no "should" about it --
only a "would." Sometimes when I am faced with a decision, I try to figure out
how the various options fit into God’s plan for my destiny. But God’s plan for
my destiny is happiness; if something would truly make me happy, behold God’s
plan for my destiny. Instead of asking some remote God who lives on a distant
cloud what I should do, I need simply ask the God within me what to do. God’s
radio frequency is pure joy. What I should do is what I would do.
The world is full of "shoulds" dictated by external sources. Religion,
society, family, and peers have all kinds of ideas about who you should be and
what you should do. But no one outside you can know your personal path as well
as you. Some of their "shoulds" match your "woulds" and some of them don’t. Many
people fall back on the seeming security of paths prescribed by external voices.
Yet a small number of independent souls, probably such as you, find aliveness
more attractive than convention. Convention means "convenient". It is convenient
to take the well-trod route, for no one questions or challenges you. Yet those
who take orders from outside sources do so at the dear cost of their passion and
individual expression -- a terrible tradeoff, to be sure.
The highest morality is personal integrity. You are in integrity when your
external acts match your inner knowing. When you forsake your truth to please
others, you fall out of integrity. Robert Louis Stevenson boldly declared, "To
know what you prefer instead of humbly saying ‘Amen’ to what the world tells
that you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive." And nothing is more
important than keeping your soul alive.
In the film
Tin Cup, Kevin Costner’s character proclaims, "When the defining moment
comes along, you define the moment or the moment defines you." We have been led
to believe that life determines who we are, when at every moment we determine
what our life is. Your decisions are honorable because they are yours.
More and more I see and hear people using cell phones in public. Sometimes
when I stand in line at an airport I hear several people within arm’s reach
chatting away on their cell phones. Cell phones ring nearly everywhere I go in
public. I find it interesting that each person’s cell phone has a distinctive
ring. If everyone’s phone had the same ring, no one in a crowd would know
whether or not to answer their phone.
Your soul’s calling also has a distinct tone. But you have to know what it
is before you can answer it. The more you live by external shoulds, the farther
you drift from the great love affair with your own spirit. The more you trust in
your soul’s calling and hearken unto it, the more you live in a consciousness of
profound love. As a Chasidic sage nobly stated, "Everyone should carefully
observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his
strength."
Previous columns
& articles by Alan Cohen.
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