…Or ‘Should’ I?

By Natalie Lance

I used to know a woman (and I’m sure you’ve met her, too) who bragged every day about her per­fect life. She had a hus­band who came home from his 9–5 to job eager to cook and clean and two chil­dren – a boy and a girl – who got all A’s, did their chores, and played soc­cer. She had a suc­cess­ful career that paid well an earned her respect in the form of a fancy house and an SUV kept so shiny it looked like had just left the show­room floor. She spent qual­ity time with her kids, tak­ing them to the mall to learn valu­able skills like how to build their own teddy bears and learn­ing to acces­sorize. She was into scrap­book­ing and col­lected antiques. She dressed for suc­cess. She drank gourmet cof­fee. One day I heard her fret, “Oh, my! I really should get my nails done.”

With­out think­ing I responded, “Says who?” Of course she wrin­kled her nose at me and walked away, uncom­pre­hend­ing the under­ly­ing ques­tion here.

Who says we need our nails done? That’s some­thing you want to do. Who came up with this ever-growing list of shoulds? I should buy a new car; mine is get­ting older. I need to get out and “do lunch” with the girls. I should spend hun­dreds of dol­lars on clothes that my child will out­grow in six months.

Wait a minute. Who wrote this list? And why are we all fol­low­ing it?

It’s stress­ful, main­tain­ing per­fec­tion these days, as we are slaves to our mate­r­ial belong­ings. Espe­cially since, when it’s all said and done, they aren’t worth any more than the value we place on them.

When did hav­ing a per­fect life become step­ping into the revolv­ing door of mak­ing and spend­ing as much money as pos­si­ble? What about express­ing our indi­vid­u­al­ity, the pur­suit of happiness?

I used to live under the spell cast by the com­mer­cial main­stream media that it was my God given right to live in a $150,000 home and drive a brand new car, and I believed that my fail­ure to achieve these “basic” goals made me worth less as a per­son. I set my goals the way Ms. Per­fect did – and I was mis­er­able. I wor­ried con­stantly about money, bills, and the job I needed to keep all of my shiny, expen­sive balls in the air. It became pol­i­tics, bot­tom lines, and doing what was best for the company.

I beat my head against a wall try­ing to con­vince my chil­dren to fit into the mold that soci­ety had for them by ask­ing them same empty ques­tions, “How are your grades?” and “Is your room clean?” “Why don’t you want to play sports like every­body else?”

Why don’t we ask ques­tions that have real answers? Why don’t we query their daily expe­ri­ences and their unique per­cep­tion of the world? If all we ever care about is what they do (and how it reflects on us) instead of who they are, we are train­ing them up as lit­tle drones with straight A’s and clean rooms … and not an orig­i­nal thought in their heads.

We’ve weeded out the value of such things. We’ve primed our chil­dren, as many of our par­ents did us, for what con­sumerism will soon take over. They will be brain-washed to believe that they are defined and mea­sured by what they own. We reward them with gold stars and teach them to reward them­selves with fancy new gadgets.

Oh, and we need these things. We should have them. We need our smart phones and data packs. We need our MP3 play­ers and GPS’s. We really should upgrade to a flat screen TV; every­one else has. If I can’t attain these sim­ple things, what does that say about me? I’m a failure!

I’m proud to say that by this society’s stan­dards, I am imper­fect. I live in a mod­est apart­ment, and most of my fur­ni­ture came from Good­will. I’m sep­a­rated because I can’t afford a divorce, but we work all of our details out civilly with­out court involve­ment. My kids are the punks who lis­ten to metal, dye their hair weird col­ors, and write song lyrics on their walls. They pre­fer toys and video games to school­work and sports. They wear a lot of hand-me-downs. But they love me, and they know I love them.

My job pays a fair wage, and I enjoy it. I have no desire to pro­mote from my cur­rent posi­tion because my job is much more fun than my boss’s and my bills are paid. Well, most of them. Who’s to say we aren’t per­fect just as we are?

These days I don’t col­lect any­thing but friends. I don’t bud­get for enter­tain­ment because true hap­pi­ness is free. I should not strug­gle to move up in the world. I don’t need a brand new car. I should not get my nails done. If I have a few extra bucks, I might “do lunch” with a friend – on half price burger day, of course. But if I do, it’s because I want to, not because I should.

Natalie Lance lives in Ash­land. She is a mem­ber of the Mid-Ohio Writer’s Ass­coia­tion and enjoys vol­un­teer­ing at the Mans­field Playhouse.

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Jan 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.