I am in Michigan visiting my parents. Last Friday, my father received the third of six high intensity radiation treatments scheduled for cancer. He has been battling various forms of cancer for 15 years! That same day, my mother went in to have a small blemish on her nose examined. It turned out also to be cancer, and she was there for 4 hours, ultimately having a quarter-size piece of her nose completely removed.

So you may be wondering what did we do on that same Friday evening? Well, we had 40 people over for drinks and appetizers of course! (All four of their daughters were in town, and it was “show and tell.”)

Did I mention that my dad is 82 and my mom is 81?

Some would say we are all nuts, but my parents said, “It’ll be easier to just have the party than to call all the guests, cancel the catering, cancel the bartenders and cancel the car parkers.” And a lovely time was had by all.

One of the bedrock principles of this transition in consciousness is that we are living a subjective — not objective — reality. We’ve been raised to think that objectivity is not only superior but more real in most cases, but in fact I don’t find that to be true.

A common case in point:

I think this should happen instead of that.

Let’s use that as a generic statement, that we could colorize with any number of details. And those details would most likely be personal. Which means that the word “should” is often a substitute for “what makes sense to me.” Or “what I prefer.” Right away I feel better with those phrases than with the word “should.”

It’s an old saying on the self-esteem trainers’ circuit: “Stop shoulding on yourself!”

So the statement, “I should lose weight” becomes “I prefer to lose weight” or “It makes sense to me to lose weight” presumably because there is some desired goal attached to that outcome. But by claiming the personal preference, I have an opprtunity to actually question it: is that really what I prefer?

It moves the energy of “should” from a passive, resigned, “I have no power” perspective into a more granular, examined one.

Judgment just about always sneaks in on the broad strokes of the wind, and falls flat on its face when the bs fan is unplugged and we look at all the pieces on the floor.

Another way of saying it is that the more information you have, the less inclined you are to judge things as absolutely right or wrong, permanent and fixed. We are fluid creatures, who may like an actor one day but not the next, who can even vote republican and democrat in the same election. Not because you should. But because it made sense to you. Because you claimed your subjective and personal preferences. Congrats to you — it’s not always easy in this noisy world with cultural and political imperatives barking at every corner.

My current guiding word is contentment. When I remember, I run my actions through that filter:

Will this bring me more or less contentment? Is this worth giving up my contentment?

What’s yours? How do you find your subjectivity?