ARE YOU WHO YOU SHOULD BE OR WHO YOU COULD BE?

The "should's" we've all heard them. "You should go to college, and you should get a higher education. Also you should probably get your degree in some sort of engineering field, as that's what is in high demand right now." Or how about, "You should get married, and you should have kids." These are all fine things to do, but what if your passion isn't engineering? Maybe instead you prefer welding or poetry. And maybe you don't really want to raise kids. It isn't that you don't like them, but that the act doesn't seem like something that would fulfill you.  So where do these ideas come from?

Well largely they come from other sources be it the media, your parents, your friends, your community, your religion, your culture, your gender identity, all of these sources tell you how you should act. And what they say you should be doing aren't always bad things, but rather it's how they say it. Religion tells us to treat others how we want to be treated and to be generous with our belongings, but it does so under the threat of being reborn into a lower caste or thrown into eternal suffering. The problem with this, and any should for that matter, is it robs the actions of their passion. When you go to school so you can get a good job, then suddenly you're no longer getting an education for your own personal development, you're getting an education so you can make money. By listening to "should's" we rob ourselves of our innate authenticity and in doing so our creativity and fulfillment. "Should's" turn activities, whether that's learning, generosity, or academic research, into gate keepers of future happiness. "Once I have a steady job, 2.5 kids, and a house with garage -- Alas! Then I can finally be happy." However I think when you get there, if those aren't things you're sincerely interested in, you won't really be happy with them at all.

So then you're stuck, because you've done all the things you were told you SHOULD do to be happy, and you aren't happy. Well there's got to be a way out of it, because there's people around me who are happy, so why can't we all just be like them? Well those people who are happy are doing something very different from those who aren't. They're trying to figure out who they can be. This ties in quite well with Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, with the pinnacle being self-actualization. The key word in that phrase being "self". Because when you start trying to figure out what you could do, instead of what you should do the paradigm shifts. You're living life for yourself, instead of for other people because "could's" are internal. However, they aren't quite as loud as "should's" in fact "could's" are much more like whispers of the mind, and the best way to hear them is to ask the mind to be quiet. That's really what meditation is, listening to who you could be instead of who you should be. The real magic begins, however, when you accept yourself as who you could be.