We’ve been taking our family ski trips most every year for the past sixteen winters.  I do love being in the mountains. I love the air, the scenery, the food, the wine.  Probably what I like the least, though, is the skiing.  I came to it quite late.  The first time I ever tried it I was a few months shy of my 40th birthday, with two little kids and lots of reasons to be risk averse.  My husband took to it immediately, as did the kids, but for me it was mixed…sometimes I would love it and be totally exhilerated, other times I’d be scared to death.  But for a long time I really struggled over those mornings when I’d wake up and think, no, not today.  I’m taking the day off.  For many seasons, on such mornings I’d feel embarrassed and guilty.  I’d say to myself, “Come on, Sue, you really should go out and ski.  You should.” Then, usually I would go out and, usually, it would be fine.  I often even ended up happy that I forced myself to do it.  But not always.

I do believe it can be important to force yourself to do something you don’t want to do. If it is fear or insecurity that is stopping you, it can be an important learning opportunity to challenge yourself.  But as I get older I have learned to try to determine why I might be forcing myself to do something that I’m uncomfortable with, and if the reason is because I think I “should” do it, then I’ve started to allow myself to look that “should” in the eye and say “f* off .”  This morning I thought I “should” go skiing despite being tired and achey, and I didn’t.  I didn’t even feel guilty about it.  Instead, I’m giving my body a break and am sitting here thinking about all the shoulds in my life that I have turned my back on.  And I’m realising that many of those decisions not to do something I “should” have done, have gone on to become some of the most positive and important decisions of my life.

* Not doing the job I should do, and daring to be a writer instead.

* Not organizing my first novel, “Tangled Roots”, as it should have been but going with an unusual structure.  And the same can be said of daring to insist that “Dreams of May” is not a poetry collection but, rather, a play. In other words, daring to write what I want, how I want, regardless.

* Parenting decisions like not sending my kid to the school some said he “should” go to but daring to  try something different.  Daring to help my son take on a more unusual educational choice rather than the one some might say he “should” have taken.

* And for me, the most important of all, daring not to marry someone from my own faith  but instead, marrying who I “shouldn’t” and finding  a way to make it work.

Writing all these, I found that the flip side of “should” has often been “dare.” Turning my back on what I should have done has often meant daring to do something else.  I have certainly been called stubborn in my life, but I would now like to think that sometimes that stubbornness has really been courage. 

So, am I really saying that staying in and not skiing today has been the courageous thing to do?  Well, even I won’t go so far as that.  But it has allowed me to take this morning to think about all the times I haven’t done what I “should” have done, and to think that as I face decisions that I know are coming due, I can continue to gather up my courage as I have in the past and dare not to do what I should.