should
/SHo͝od/
verb
used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions.
and as it goes, i should be better. i should be kinder/smaller/sweeter. i should be where i’m not — some place distant, far ahead. and thus, i’m on the wrong track. should be collegiate, airtight accredited. i should be, by now, the vision of my youth— ivy league armored. i should be a person worth knowing/worth loving/acknowledgment donned / poet laureate/ peer reviewed princess. i should/i could/i would’ve/i might’ve /// if i’d only been a thing besides myself.
i knew (still know) a man in paris named david (older, brilliant). david merits a never ending written monument dedicated to his honor, however, this is not that piece. chèr david once chided, often correcting my french, though never more insistently than when i used the term ‘il faut'.’ translation: it’s necessary. implication: imperative. prescription: culpabilité.
example »
MOI : "il faut que je me mieux soigner”
DAVID : "non, non, non — il faut rien. tu as une chance de t'améliorer. ce n'est pas une obligation, c'est un cadeau."
my french remains rudimentary, alongside my memory, but david’s lesson still stands above wisdom. it’s a thing i must remind myself of, day in and out. growth is not a burden, it’s a gift. i’ve known many people who have lost the chance to transform within this life. better alive than inert, je crois. the greatest gift i’ve been bestowed is the delay in meeting my final form. there are so many versions of myself left to become, and i doubt my horizon will ever fail in surprising me. we’re not limping, we’re blooming. the road to heaven isn’t paved with shame, it is cobbled with opportunity.
it’s not that i should change, transform, renew. there’ll be no grading at the finish line. i don’t shapeshift out of obligation. i evolve because i am intrigued by the songs of the ethers i might grow to fill. there’s nothing wrong with who i am now, yet still i know she is only built of now. tomorrow is another story, and it’s one that i am eager to greet. it is like this that i keep going. not out of shame, nor out of spite. i continue out of curiosity: intrigue unabashedly childlike, feline.
i think now of one of my favourite quotes, offered by a man who seemed to exist in a realm beyond ‘should’:
“Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?”
Salvador Dali
i pray that today will be one in which you’ll brave the same, seemingly frivolous, question. i hope that you’ll rise to the same calling to joy. if only just for today, let’s remember that it isn’t what we should accomplish within our precious winter hours. let’s leave duty on the stoop, give the merit monster a firm kick toward the door.
the question is not what will make us good?/lovable?/worthy? the query is (as it’s always been), how do we wish to march/meander/mosey on our gorgeous roam toward rapture?
(if you’ve a vision of your meander, please share! today, mine looks like touching base with loved ones, near and far, editing poems with puppy Scarlet on my lap, and dinner with a <3 in the evening)
(i feel so, so blessed :-)
i love you (honestly + endlessly),
j
Thank you for this
right where I am on my journey, too. thank you for conjuring up sacred words for the shapeshifting. <3