THE Rules

It's a sad and frightening thing: We all have "rules." Quite a few of us believe that our rules are the only right ones and when other people don't follow them, we become self-righteously angry and outraged. Talk about barriers to having the life of our dreams!!! This is one is way bigger than the Great Wall of China. Sometimes I think that each person's rules are as individual as fingerprints. Then I think that surely there must be some that we all have in common. Maybe so, but they are very hard to find.

In the life of my dreams, I have joyful relationships with the people in my life. This is not going to happen if I try to impose my "rules" on them or if I assume I know what their rules are. It would make sense to ask people what their rules are, but often they think you are being obnoxious if you ask, because they assume their rules are the only right ones. It makes it tough to get along with them for sure. And, of course, I'm going to be tough to get along with if I think my rules are the only right ones.

We all seem to have rules about things from the little things of life to the huge things of life, but we rarely think about where our rules come from and whether we really believe in them. There are rules about how to hang the toilet paper, how to fold towels, how to manage a checking account, how money should be spent, how to divide money in a marriage, how to discipline children, how friends are supposed to treat each other, how much time should elapse before calling someone back, what should be posted on Twitter, how often we should have sex, who should do household chores, when kids should be allowed to date, if it's permissible to have 11 items in the line for 10 or less items at the grocery store. Then there are the nationwide and worldwide rules about how nations should treat each other, whether it's okay to lie about a product you're trying to sell, if it's okay to slant the truth about something to get votes, who you should and shouldn't have sex with and under what circumstances, and on and on.

Most of us seem to get pretty worked up about this stuff. Sometimes we get as worked up about how to hang the toilet paper as we do about how nations should treat each other. Divorces, getting fired from jobs, ending of friendships, and nasty wars could be traced back to conflicts in rules. In the life of my dreams finding some peace with all this is vital. So... What to do?

I believe the best place to start is to examine our own rules and ask ourselves where they came from and why we have them. We may want to modify them to suit our real values and cause them to conform with love and peace. Then we may want to tactfully and subtly find out what the people in our lives believe the rules are. As I said before, it would be wise to be extremely cautious since outright asking them may hit a nerve if they believe their's are the only right ones.

When I was going to college I had a business where I provided household chores for people who were unable or did not have time to do them themselves. Boy, did I ever find out about rules. Most people did not want to tell me specifically what they wanted done. They said things like, "Just do what you would do for yourself." Following those directions got me in a lot of trouble, because the way I did things was nothing like how they thought they should be done. But they thought everybody did things their way they did because - well, they thought their rules were the only right ones.

One guy became a customer when he bought a house from some people I had worked for for many years. He became angry with me because I did not use furniture polish on all the wood cabinets in the home. He said everybody knew that you should use furniture polish on wood cabinets. Well, the previous owners absolutely forbade me to use furniture polish on them because they were afraid it would get on the floor and make it slippery. Hmmm. And there was no way the guy ever believed that I was doing anything except trying to get out of doing what I should know to do without being told. So, I fired myself. People like that are just too hard to work for. Sometimes that's the best solution. As I gained more experience, I sometimes decided not to try to work for people who couldn't/wouldn't tell me what they wanted me to do.

Personal relationships are even more tricky. I was married for over 20 years to my soul mate. I can't even think of a way to explain how much we loved each other, admired each other and how much fun we had. I married him knowing he had traditional rules about the roles of men and women in marriage. Which I don't. We came to an uneasy truce before we were married with his agreement to do some (not very many, in my opinion) household chores. But he did my laundry as well as his own for the whole 20 plus years we were together. I think that in his heart he really thought he shouldn't have to be doing laundry - it was really my job - but he did it to humor me because he loved me. The fact that housework and cooking were never shared - well, I humored him in that because I loved him. We never did agree about how to handle money and the only way we survived that was to keep our money separate. But at least we did know what each other's rules were and learned to live with and compromise our differences. I don't think there are any other ways to deal with each other's rules. Changing the other person's mind is just not likely. I often wonder if this method would help in politics and in conflict among nations.