Outgrowing Obligation
It's only taken 40-odd years.
San Francisco & Napa Friends: I’ll be up in the Bay Area for a series of events at the end of the month. You can join me on the evening of Thursday, January 22nd at Book Society (tickets here). You can join me and Tara Schuster at Frog’s Leap Winery on Friday, January 23rd (tickets here). And I will now be at the Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley on Saturday, January 24th for a morning event/workshop (tickets here).
I’m with my friend Monica Lewinsky on her podcast Reclaiming this week, chatting all things On Our Best Behavior and Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness. We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time and it did not disappoint—it was a fun conversation, come listen!
Every New Year, my friend Jen likes to pick a word as an anthem, and after enough gentle text prods from her to do the same, I finally picked one. My word for this year is more of a phrase, as the word itself feels loaded: It’s freedom, or I would say more specifically, it’s freedom to respond. Or not.
I’m closer to 50 than 40 now—wild how fast that happened—and only now do I feel like I’m outgrowing obligation. Or at least working toward that realization: The goal, of course, is to navigate my life based on an internal GPS, and not compulsions from the outside world. Sometimes this isn’t practically possible—I’ve got responsibilities like everyone else—but I’ve found that I too frequently use the language “I have to” when I really…don’t. And it feels like a good time to stop.
I’ve recently gotten back into Human Design (you can hear my conversation about the system on Pulling the Thread with Chetan & Carola here, and a Q&A with Nik McRae on how he uses it in his readings). For those who are familiar with the system, I’m a Manifesting Generator 6 / 2—my conscious line (6) is the Role Model and my unconscious line (2) is the Hermit. (For those who are unfamiliar, you can generate your free chart here: There are some great resources for going deeper like Emma Dunwoody’s podcast, but it’s a good use of AI (I like Google’s Gemini) to plug in your results and get a baseline understanding of who you are. (I search Type + Profile, and then I search Incarnation Cross — I’m not that sophisticated.)
Lately, I’ve been working with a healer who uses Human Design as an anchor (someday, hopefully she’ll let me add her to my list) and she reminded me that everyone with a Role Model (6) line in their profile goes through three life stages. From 0 to 30, you are in a period of experimentation; from 30 to 50, you “go to the roof” and observe, synthesizing what you’ve learned; at 50, you re-enter life more fully, ready to be a Role Model simply by being yourself. She told me that as I enter this final stage gate, I’m in a period of sloughing, of leaving old relationships behind. I know we just exited the Year of the Snake, but I feel this acutely: I have winnowing bandwidth for friendships that zap my energy or feel overtly transactional. (See: “Transactional Relationships & Shadow Vows.”) These types of relationships used to irritate me—I felt bound, in some way, to serve, conscript myself, and reciprocate—but now I just feel…bored? And like I can leave; the only person holding me there was myself, though it took me many years to understand this. I don’t want to use and I don’t want to be used outside of the transference of love, curiosity, and affection. It’s that basic.
This brings me back to the idea of freedom to respond and obligation. The etymology of oblige is Latin ob (towards) + ligare (to bind). I spoke about this briefly on last month’s solo episode (“Three Things to Leave Behind”), but a frequently cited etymology of religion is Latin re (back) + ligare (to bind). (Some say that religion comes from relegere, or to re-read.) The idea that these two words are potentially related is interesting to me, in so much as obviously, we have covenants: We have covenants with each other, covenants with nature, and if your worldview includes this, covenants with the divine. We are obligated (theoretically) to be good citizens and to care for each other in a web of mutuality. Like every word or concept, obligation has its shadow and its light. Its light side gestures toward the reliance on each other we hope to feel in times of need, or even the joy we often feel in serving each other. Obligation’s shadow side, of course, is another thing entirely: I have to, or I should. (As the wise people say: Stop “should-ing” all over yourself.)
This year, I’m going to keep working the muscle of saying no, and stop running my life with a baseline fear of disappointing other people or “getting in trouble” for not doing what other people want. (It’s sad, but true: I always think I’m in trouble! And yes, I’m a grown-ass adult.) Because the truth is that the irritation I mentioned above—that resentment—is really just subtle, slow-building anger. And there is enough anger in the world without mine.
I’d also like to offer that I never, ever want anyone to feel obligated—in that shadow-y sense—to me. I don’t want anyone to feel compelled to do what they think I want, or to operate out of fear of disappointing me. I don’t want this energy anymore; I don’t think it’s the energy that any of us need. So here is to shedding, and here is to freedom to respond, which hopefully opens up more space for all that we want to bring into our lives in its stead.
It would make Jen very happy if you all picked a word, too. What seed are you planting?
Compost - letting the past be what it is and become a part of my story but no longer the story.
Totally. Releasing our loved ones from obligation is an awesome gift, and one that typically comes back to us once given.
My word is FLOW. Like, find it, be it, keep it…dig it.