WHAT SHOULD I DO? . . .

When Tolstoy was lying dying at the Astapovo railway station, he repeated over and over during the last moments of his life: ‘I do not understand what it is I have to do.’

What should I do? How many times do we ask ourselves this question every day? How many times during a given week, or month or year? How many times over the course of our lives?

Consider that it is the question we ask ourselves more than any other question. The context changes. We ask it when we are faced with making major decisions: Where should I go to college? What should I major in while I am in college? What is my career path? Should I take this job? We ask it when we are faced with powerfully personal decisions: How should I treat my aging parents? How should I respond to a friend who is in crisis? Should I discipline or punish my child? How should I talk to my spouse about a difficult issue?  This common question also applies to less important or less stressful encounters: What should I do about my neighbor’s yappy dog? What should I do about the kid who leaves his toys in our yard?

We also know that decision-making involves more than the ‘shoulds.’ Decision-making concerns our simple wants, our deepest desires, or our spiritual longings. If we are also self-reflective folks we also ask ourselves other questions: Who am I? Who am I choosing to become? What am I called to be in this world? What is God calling me to be and do? Who is calling me – is it God, or is it my inner guide or is it the ‘universe’ or is it a need that exists in my world?

For me, the self-reflective questions comprise what I call my ‘Essential Life Questions.’ For me, these questions are the most challenging and at times the most anxiety and stress producing. At times they have been so powerful that I have felt I was paralyzed when it came to responding to them. I was paralyzed by the tyranny of the ‘should’ and the ‘ought’ and the ‘must.’ At times I have found these questions to be so powerful that I used a great deal of energy distracting myself so I would not have to engage them. I did not want to think about them. I did not want to respond. I did not want to decide.

Decisions, we know, can whelm us over. The ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ we encounter on a daily basis can wash over us like a tsunami run amok. No wonder that our culture is distraction rich. We retreat to the distractions of work or technology or food or drugs of all types. This is a personal and a cultural issue: We (individually and collectively) have become addicted to speed and busyness and distractions of all types. Yet, we cannot escape this simple, recurring often haunting question:

What should I do?