Escaping the Tyranny of Holiday Shoulds

If you're like me (and can't help overthinking everything) you have an endless list of 'shoulds' weighing on you. The holidays pile on more. Is there relief from the tyranny of shoulds?

October was an exhilarating, exhausting, and emotional month. I attended a wedding in New Jersey, traveled to Italy – but then learned that my best friend Shari had died in a horrific car crash. I came home to give comfort to Shari’s kids, then drove to Michigan for her funeral, and left there to attend another wedding in Buffalo, and then flew to Minnesota to attend a writer’s workshop. And then November came along and said, “hold my beer…”

Whiplashed by – everything – I want to cocoon, and sit on the couch to read.

Sunlight is pouring in the windows and highlighting a patina of dust on the glass coffee table. The base of the table is black. I bend over to draw a line in the particles with my finger. Now it is blacker. I shake off the thought of dusting and open Sarah Maas’ book, Throne of Glass. I wonder who dusts the throne.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Tim outside raking the leaves into small hills. Good lord there are so many. I should - no. No. I brush the thought from my mind. I definitely should not.

Leaves - shit – it’s November. I should start planning Thanksgiving. Do I order a turkey? Although, none of us really likes turkey. If it’s just the immediate family, we might do lasagna and chicken parm — because who isn’t thankful for lasagna and chicken parm? Still, I do like cranberry sauce and stuffing … Shari’s kids are coming for dessert. Definitely I will make a pecan pie, a tart, and something pumpkin. Maybe my friend Lisa’s pumpkin roll. It’s delicious. I text her for the recipe. She responds in five minutes. How can she be so organized?

My thoughts shift to wondering if my sons will need to work while they are here. I should clean out the office that has become a storage facility after the flood in the basement. I’d been meaning to buy a sofa bed for that room. If I order one— that will pressure me to finally get this room together. Oh! Maybe we should put up the tree when they are home.

The list of shoulds has become a mine field. I give up reading and get up.

I glance over to my office. I should finish the book I have been writing on AI-Powered Search for Normal People (that’s the working title - if you have a better idea - please leave it in the comments). Wait, I have sourdough bread proofing in the fridge. But then again, I had an idea for this essay. I should get it down before I forget.

Instead, on autopilot, I veer into the kitchen to put a cast iron pot in the oven, and set it for 450. As it heats up, my gaze is interrupted by a counter covered with colorful bags of items I brought home from Italy. Early Christmas presents. Do I even remember what I got or who they are for? I should label them and put them away. I spy some boxes that I had saved for an occasion like this and sort the items into the different boxes. Yay! something is done.

With a small portion of the counter cleared, I lay down parchment paper. My hands still wet from washing them will make it easier to scoop out the dough and form a loaf on the paper. I love the pungent smell of sourdough. It’s become a biweekly to-do. Alex gave me a cast iron, “artisan bread-baking oven.” It’s oblong, with a domed lid, handles are situated on both the length and the width. The best part about it is that the base is shallow. When I used my conventional Dutch oven - I worried about branding myself when lowering the dough into the hot pot. This one solves the problem. However, it must weigh 15 pounds. As I pull the rack toward me, and feel the heat, I brace myself to remove the top. Lift with your knees, I think. I transfer the parchment with dough into the pan. Now to get the lid back on, not crush the dough, nor fall headfirst into the oven…

The bread is baking, what should I do now? I know, I’ll set up Jacques.

Three years ago, Shari convinced me to buy the Dreamebot10 - a robot that vacuums and mops the floors. It is by far the best splurgy thing I ever bought.

The base has two receptacles that self-clean the mops. I fill the clean water one - and empty the dirty one. It has cute little removable mop heads if I want to run it on carpets. We only have a few area rugs - so I prefer to keep it mop-adorned for the hardwood floors. We named him Jacques, and I can control it from my phone. Despite using it weekly, the little receptacle is packed with dog hair and dust. How can there be this much dust?

Unfortunately, in recent months, Jacques has been exhibiting signs of dementia (or menopause) re-cleaning the same areas, sometimes just rotating in circles before scooting off, or forgetting to go into the bedrooms. I should order a new one, before the tariffs go into effect. Searching from my phone I’m stunned to see there are now three more generations since I bought mine.

I can’t think about this now, and put the phone down.

Tim walks in from raking, and announces he’s going to go work out. What time are we eating? he asks. Damn, I forgot I have ground chuck, pork, and hot Italian sausage in the fridge to mix for meatballs.

“Ugh, it’s going to be late. I need Romano cheese, parsley, and the peeled San Marzano tomatoes,” I answer.

“I’ll grab them on the way back. Let me know if you need anything else.”

The bread is done and cooling on the counter. The sofa bed is ordered, so I cart three boxes from the office to the basement, ignoring that I “should” sort through them. Instead, I sit down to work on this essay. I wasn’t certain how to end it — I’m still swimming in all the 'shoulds' surfacing in my head, a never-ending list that makes me feel like I’m falling behind.

And isn’t that the real tyranny? The sense that we’re powerless against all the things we think we should be doing, especially when the world feels uncertain, unstable, hopeless.

But then, I come across

Joyce Vance

’s recent take on Civil Discourse where she mentions Vaclav Havel’s: The Power of the Powerless. The Czech leader wrote his essay when Czechoslovakia was going through its own crisis of dark times. In it,
he speaks to the deeper kind of hope that has nothing to do with guaranteed outcomes.

'Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.'

Havel's words resonate as I sift through the debris of my 'shoulds.' The antidote to the tyranny of shoulds isn’t conquering every task—it’s finding meaning in the smallest acts that make sense in the moment. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe the lesson isn’t about getting everything right but simply doing the next thing that makes sense — dusting the coffee table, baking bread, planning a holiday meal, comforting a friend’s children.

No, definitely not dusting.

In the end, hope isn’t about being certain of the future; it’s about making peace with the fact that we can’t control it. Maybe that’s how we reclaim our power — by letting go of the ‘shoulds’ that weigh us down and embrace the things that simply matter to us. Jacques wobbles - but even with his imperfect efforts my floors are clean.