rule breaking

I used to think there are a lot more rules than there really are. Rules about what you should wear and shouldn’t. Rules about how you should behave. Rules about what you should do. Ways you should or shouldn’t spend your time. Things you should or shouldn’t talk about.

Then I met a bunch of people who don’t do them, and I figured out that what I took for granted as the “right” way to do things isn’t. Or it isn’t the only way.

I’m not talking about laws, although I suppose those would factor in here somewhere, too. But ways of being and acting that aren’t illegal, but are just not the way you “should” do things. From not washing wooden spoons in the dishwasher to not boasting about accomplishments. Clothes that aren’t right for your body type or colors that “don’t go.” Even grammar rules, or ones about story structure or ways of designing a painting.

I’m at the point in my life where I’m questioning all of it. All. Of. It.

I realize that rules make life easier. And, for example, I load my own dishwasher in a certain way because through trial and error I’ve figured out that it works pretty well if I do it that way. But it’s by no means a rule, and if I were to teach someone else how to do it, I wouldn’t be very didactic about it—I’d just say, look, if you angle the glasses this way, they get cleaner. But try it your way and see what happens.

So, rules can often be shortcuts to getting a result in a way that is satisfying. But you (I) don’t have to do it that way. It’s not actually wrong.

There’s a freedom in not being wrong all the time. Or in fearing being wrong when there actually isn’t a right or wrong.

(Again, I’m not talking about murder or racism—things that as a society we’ve decided have morality attached to them. I’m talking about smaller rules I put on myself that don’t actually exist as a rule.)

For some of you—the not rule-followers—this isn’t a very deep post. But for me, this discovery felt profound. In fact, having so many choices about what to do or how to behave, opens the world up to infinite possibilities, and that can be a little scary. No wonder I cling (clung) to rules.

But I’m now finding the freedom exhilarating.

I was watching Season 7 of Druck, which features the very glamorous and beautiful Isi—who decides by the end of the show (spoiler) to adopt “alle” pronouns. (It’s at about 19 minutes into the clip. Which if you keep watching, Isi finally admits to Sascha that they should be more than friends, which I’d been waiting for the entire season. OH, MY HAPPY HEART.) But as the very wise David says, there are no rules.

I like it.

Am I the only one who used to follow all the rules and is now determined to break the ones that don’t actually mean anything?

Photo of Eren M. Güvercin portraying Isi Inci on the German TV show, Druck