Rules

 Rules

In my early life I would take things to a very literal sense. Never meant never and always meant always. Never being mean was rooted in my mind. Always being kind was a discussion that occurred very regularly in my early life, especially at the church that I attended. Now I am stuck, trying to catch up to those who took certain rules less seriously than I did. 

When I was young I really hated the idea of rules that were unspoken. I would play games with my father and brother and they would play the game the way I knew for the most part until they do something crazy and they say this is a rule and this is how I can apply it to win. It was really lame to be on the receiving end of that and that may be where my hatred for the concept came from. I felt like I was the butt of their joke to win and wipe the floor with me. 

Well I grew up and recently it hit me how many rules I live by that haven’t been stated explicitly. That was a funny pill to swallow. It wasn’t hard to swallow but it felt a little funny realizing it. I figured out that I make these assumptions about life and I hold myself and others accountable to these rules that I have accepted.   

It’s strange for me to not think that is weird. Unwritten rules are a very healthy thing to have for everyone as long as they do not interfere with a normal healthy life. If the rule is small enough to only change a small amount of how I live my life compared to others then I will be fine. For example, I have a rule that those I confide in and look up to have to understand and love me. This means that I have to feel their understanding in a very emotional way. I do not talk about this rule often and it was not taught to me. What I was taught is to be mindful of my feelings and mindful of the way others treat me. With time and experience I started to discover what I liked and what I didn’t like to see in people. But of course I don’t expect to live the same way all the time. 

We are always learning new things or obtaining more data to fuel and rationalize new theories to live by and this can be a very dangerous process. When it comes to unspoken rules, you can keep them in the back of your mind and you don’t have to think about them all the time to live by them, but the problem comes when the unspoken rule is significantly wrong and huge. Just like we have small rules that affect small things about our lives, we also have rules that affect our lives in a very large way, and even these rules can be unspoken. 

I imagine a child who doesn’t feel loved by his father. I’m not saying the father doesn’t actually love the kid, but it is very easy to misinterpret love and the actions of others. This kid will go on for years and years believing that he doesn’t have a loving father figure. I believe that our bodies and minds look for that feeling of love elsewhere if we think that we have a lack of it. This kid then goes on to rely on the first friends he can get to show him affection that he recognized as love even if those friends have other habits that are unhealthy.