Life often seems to be full of shoulds. Gotta do this, gotta do that. Why? Either because I really have to, in order to eat or have a roof overhead or take care of family, or because my puritan conscience tells me I must improve the shining day in some way. Is there another way?

I’ve always lived to achieve. As I think about it, I want to put the blame for this unpleasant pressure on getting older. Adults have responsibilities, etc. But I now realize it was just as true when I was a child—there were a lot of things that should be done.

Now here’s what’s interesting, and what’s taken many long years for me to realize: every time you push really hard you will get pushed back in some way. Just like Newton’s Third Law (The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear), for every should there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

So what’s the equal and opposite reaction to should? You guessed it.“I won’t!!!” And how does this play out in my life, your life? Everything we make ourselves do for some tyrannical inner Should God creates a powerful refusal that sooner or later will catch up with us.

We knew it was true of teenagers and love to share the old joke: “Have a good time, son,” says the father. “Don’t tell me what to do!!!” cries the son. But did you ever apply Newton’s Third Law to yourself? Think on this. Inside each of us is both a good guy who gets things done, the achiever, the pleaser, the little friend of all the world, and a rebel.

Do you think you have to quash that rebel to get things done? I certainly did. But I was wrong. The rebel is telling me something really useful. And it’s not about what I’m doing but about how I’m doing it. Sometimes I need to know when I force myself into action in a way that part of me disapproves of. Sometimes I push myself and my body too far in the name of success. That’s just asking for the trouble that comes with exhaustion, illness and therefore missed deadlines.

What I’ve learned is that if I try to quash the rebel for too long, I get depressed, feel empty, even paralyzed. Where have feelings gone? Where is the sense of myself as a human being? Wow! It was all sucked up into a should. If I were to personify it, I’d say a should is an enemy of the people, an enemy of feeling, an enemy of body and an enemy of my freedom to choose.

To take this push—and—get—shoved—back  analogy deeper into psychological territory might disclose a very disconcerting truth. When I’m busy with  my shoulds, I just may be avoiding what I’m really here to do. Like many, many people in this high—pressure society, I take refuge in busyness in order to avoid recognizing that I’ve wandered far from home territory, far from the possibility of being present to my life as it unfolds. Jungian analyst James Hollis, in his wonderful book, Swamplands of the Soul, calls it neurosis or self—estrangement. And he says the only way out would be to face what, with all our shoulds, we are defending ourselves against. “What task are we avoiding?” he asks. Then adds, with a ringing authority that sinks deep into my innards: “There is always a task.”