Goat Therapy and The Crossroads of Should and Must

Because sometimes we're resting in the afternoon.

Hello Beautifuls,

I am humbled and thrilled by the community gathering here, at each new subscriber and each person who’s been with me along the way.

Many of you are new here, having read my piece on

Sober App Substack

last week. Welcome!

I don’t talk much about sobriety here, but I do talk about the struggle and beauty of being human, day after day, and how more love is always the answer. I hope you find something that resonates.

You, lovely readers are the one who makes this whole thing work. So thank you. The deepest places in my soul are grateful to you.

🌈Like every other social platform, Hello Beautifuls will get put in front of more people if you ❤️ this post (or share or restack it). I’d be grateful if you do.

The park behind my house where Lucy and I share a moment of joy.

She sees me and stands still, all four paws planted for a half-breath before she runs towards me at full sprint. "Is that you, Lucy?" I call, knowing it's her. I can tell her sleek grey body from across the field. I kneel down on the sidewalk and she brings her little body up short, grazing my knees and wriggling herself in between them. She whimpers and yelps and turns around, trying to show me her belly, too excited to stop moving long enough to get there. She jumps up and nuzzles my face, then runs off, zigzags, sniffs, brings me back a stick, runs off.

It is this kind of unabashed joy and untethered delight I've been longing for lately. What if humans could greet each other this way, regardless of color or height or gender or weight or job description or voting preference? Can you imagine? I can. We'd all quit our jobs and hang out in a park chasing sticks and each other.

Or perhaps, we'd be like the goats I sat with on Friday. Goat therapy, I called it. My husband took us out to a farm where the goats roam free half the day and for the other half chill in a quarter-acre pen with seesaws, trees, hay, picnic tables (for the goats) and grass. For $10 dollars, humans can chill with them. The young goatherdess told us as she took our money, "As long as you respect that you're in their space, they won't head butt you." Check. We walked up to a few goats, stood still, waited for them to come to us. Some did. Some didn't. A few were insistent, leaning in, pushing others away to get all the pets. There was no agenda, no food to give them, no activities, just goats resting or eating. Nothing to do but sit with the goats and occasionally pet them. It's the most relaxing thing I've done in months.

In yoga, we talk about being present during practice, of having nothing else to do, nowhere else to be but right where we are on our mat. But even in a yoga asana practice, there is the next pose, the breath, the focus. With the goats, truly I had nowhere to go, nothing else to do but sit. It was magic.

In an effort to have more of this magical calm in my daily life, I'm slowly breaking up with my smartphone, in that way you break up and are still friendly, because you spent all day, every day together for years. And also they've got all your photos.

I feel exhausted, overwhelmed, fragmented by what's happening in our country right now. Our systems were not working before, were in fact, built only to work for a select demographic of people with power and wealth, but breaking them the way Trump is breaking them leaves me feeling violated and unsure of our future. What will my mother do if the social security checks stop coming?

And my phone only presses on the cracks in my already fractured soul. Even without sound. I have all the volumes set to off, it vibrates only if I have a call. But still, all those apps with their alarming red notification numbers: Substack 48, LinkedIn 35, Slack 19, Messages 10, Voicemail 5, WhatsApp 17. They make me anxious, so I've moved them off my home screen, but I think it's time to keep my work on my laptop and my life somewhere other than my mini pocket computer.

A friend and fellow Substacker, Steve at

TheUltraContemplative

has been writing this month about shoulds. Specifically, "Death by Shoulds." I love this title. It helps me realize I need to let go a little. If the world is falling apart, which many of us feel like it is right now, how do we manage all of the shoulds? We can't. There are too many. Too many causes, too many people, countries, institutions, organizations and lands needing help.

Steve reminds me it's time to let go of the shoulds and as Elle Luna writes in her book, The Crossroads of Should and Must, follow the musts. Her wisdom is meant for these times. She explains that shoulds are inevitable, but musts are essential. They are the driving force of our creativity, our soul, the things that light us up, the things we were meant to do in the few years we have in this particular body, in this particular time.

And that helps me remember this is all fleeting. If the old-growth redwoods which have been standing for one, two, three-thousand years, are but the tiniest blip on the earth's timeline, our human presence here barely even registers. And honestly, once we cut the tree down, it no longer cares, we are the ones who register the loss.

So, what matters is how we spend our single drop of time, how much we pay attention, how much we tell others we love them, how much we put out energy on our musts, not our shoulds.

Elle is primarily a painter, not a writer, and she now teaches classes in process painting, which focuses on the experience of creating, not the final piece.

I want to be in a lifelong class of process humaning.

Lately, I've been asking myself why I am here now. I think I would have been better suited to the middle of last century, or to being a whale. I find humaning confusing and heartbreaking at its core. I'm learning it comes with an unending supply of sprinkles called joy, beauty, love, nature–but that we have to help ourselves to these, even when, especially when, we are feeling wrung out, sore, tired, heartbroken.

I heard an author on NPR this weekend, and I wish I'd heard his name, but he said something very close to, "What if it doesn't get better for black folk, trans folk, immigrant folk. Are we to stop finding joy? We need to remember to seek joy now, not just plan to do it when things get better."

Amen.

I think, what I want, as I break up with my smartphone, is maybe not so much a split as a rearranging of our relationship. What if instead of causing anxiety and stress, my phone could be a source of connection. Instead of telling me how much I have left to do, maybe it could tell me how much I've already accomplished, how wonderful I am and how magical it is that I'm even here. Maybe there's an app that has a little red number on it for how many trees are saved each day. That's something I could get behind.

My husband and I went on a walk on Sunday mid-day. We passed a woman with cropped and greying curly black hair, wearing a loose purple t-shirt taking out her trash. As we passed I said, "You've inspired me! I'm going to take my bins out early this week." She smiled and said, "Well, yes. Sometimes we're resting in the afternoon and don't want to get up to do the garbage." I happily agreed, saying, "Exactly! Yes!" Because that was just how I felt. I'm always tired by 7pm on Sunday when I think to take the trash out. We walked on for a bit and on our way back, the woman was finishing up in her yard, we smiled and she called out, "You all have a nice afternoon now." We wished her the same and I felt a warmth for a stranger I haven't felt for months. I have thought of her several times since, and I wonder if I pass by again next Sunday, maybe we can strike up a conversation, maybe, just maybe, I could try to make a new friend. .

I don't know much these days, but I do know this. There is always common ground. Dogs are a good start. Garbage day another. Loving our kids and parents and friends is fairly certain. Wanting the best for them and for ourselves is universal. I'm tired of being mad at people without even knowing them. In fact, I'm tired of being mad at people I do know.

My must right now feels like telling more people they are worthy, they are enough, they are loved, regardless of who they voted for. I'm done otherizing. I want to be one-izing.

I like the idea of befriending people with whom I fundamentally disagree. Because if we're friends, that means we care for each other, and if we care for each other, that means we want good things for each other. And if those things are true, then taking care of each other becomes a must, not a should. Taking care of each other becomes process humaning where we focus on experiencing each other, in all of our wondrous, halting, stumbling, gorgeous chaos. Where, rather than sending our gaze away onto the next shiny or broken or disastrous thing, we get to live in the crucible of creating for and with each other.

We get to seek joy, now, with and because of each other.

For more on people being lovely humans:

In this piece by Anne Kadet, you’ll meet a man who truly gets helping others. I want to be him when I grow up.

Brooklyn's Pay-What-You-Wish Barber Wants You to Be Yourself!

For good news about humans and nature: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/

And one of my all time favorite songs that soothes my soul. Little tidbit, if you don’t know Larry Carlton and unless your a bit of a jazz/guitar/smooth jazz geek, you probably don’t (OHMYGOSH PLEASE TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS IF YOU DO!!)

Larry is one of the mostly highly regarded, and back in the day, sought after, studio musicians playing with Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Herb Alpert, Christopher Cross and Dolly Parton to name a few.

“Sleepwalk,” was originally written and recorded by Santo & Johnny.

And if you’re in the mood to be moved by the human condition and some lyrics, try this one:

As always, with so much love,

Jocelyn

xoxo

Did you know that liking this post helps Hello Beautifuls get found my more people (the algorithm likes likes. So if you’re feeling it, ❤️ this post (or share or restack it). I’d be grateful if you do.