The shoulds

Photo is of the cover of my new book
Courtesy of O Books



Opened the door for the cats this morning and found that the light that yesterday was red was green. I wondered if it would stay green all day. When I went back for the cats, it was red. I haven’t noticed if it’s yellow in between yet. Maybe, if it is, the intersection is open. Another inconvenience gone. Ha. Ha.

What’s a convenience? A convenience to you might be a pain in the neck to me. I could go on and on about how convenient all these companies are making things for us by making us “do it ourselves” and get off on a real tangent. I’ve done it before.

But then this whole thing of getting up and writing in the morning is a tangent. Letting my mind ramble along like a wayfarer until it settles down.

Let me use Verizon’s “Friends and Family” discount as an example. They advertise all over the place that you can choose your ten most frequently dialed numbers, get them on a list, and you won’t be charged for them. It’ll save you tons of money on your cell phone bill. There’s a web address right on the envelope that your bill comes in. The implication is – just go sign up – it’s easy!

I tried on and off for two months to get on “Friends and Family.” It’s one of those things that if you’re anything like me, you don’t inconvenience yourself to set up until you really need that discount, and by the time you really need that discount, you feel totally frustrated when you can’t figure out how to do it. I still don’t know how I eventually, two months, and half a dozen tries later, got to a human being. It took him 45 minutes to walk me through it. I wasn’t such a dummy after all. I first had to be signed up for the right plan and then there were all kinds of other hoops to jump through.

I tell every human being I talk to now how grateful I am to talk to them. I offer to call their managers and tell them how wonderful it is to talk to a human being. The human beings are always nice. Even patient. They get me apologizing for being the way I am and I start feeling old and like a fuddy-duddy. If I were twenty years younger, I tell myself, I’d probably be able to do this with ease. A friend was telling me about her own technical difficulties with a computer program and her inability to get answers and she said, “They lost me,” meaning whatever program and company that offered it, lost her as a customer. When you make the “convenience” (especially, I’m finding, the “self help” convenience) too difficult, you’re going to lose people.

Getting back to the light, I see it best from the steps leading out my back door. They’re higher, of course, than the yard. By the time I’m standing in front of the cabin, I can’t see the light at all, which is a blessing.

I am not going to walk out my back door and gauge my day by what color the light is…but I have to admit that after writing about it yesterday…the green light today was surprising. “Oh. It’s green now. Is there a green light somewhere in my life?”

Well, of course there is. Most of the time, in a field of green, there’s a lone red light flashing in the distance, saying Stop. Not this way. There’s an easier way. A more direct way. A simpler way. Or, Wrong direction – turn around.

The “shoulds” are the ultimate inconvenient convenience. Think about it. If you do what you “should” do, everything is going to run smoothly in the long run…right? Isn’t that the prevailing wisdom? Follow the instructions. Read the Users Manual. The How To book. And then….

I should go in and do the dishes.

That, to me, is about as much depth as you're going to get from the "shoulds."