How Rules Rule Your Life
It’s no secret that our society is rule-based. From the moment you were born, school started preparing you for how to behave in a certain way, let alone other places you might encounter later in life. Every day, everyday there are new rules coming from authorities who seem to want to lead by the book. Truth be told those books tell a lot about what we should do and what should or shouldn’t happen, but they don’t say anything about how we should feel or how our emotions may change because of them.
There’s one thing about rules and regulations that many people don’t take into account: You can break the rules.
The same way you listen to a teacher at school, or follow the rules of driving or stop signs, people conform to other rules because they want to obey authority figures or because they fear punishment. But this doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t break them if it was in your best interest. If someone you thought was an authority figure told you it wasn’t safe to cross a street, you would be hesitant at first, but then you would likely cross anyway if it meant getting home quicker. And if you thought that crossing that street posed a danger to your life or your well-being, you would be more careful than someone who hadn’t been given the same warning.
In our society, people are encouraged to obey and follow rules because this leads to safer lives, but they’re not always aware of how those rules might change them. When we ignore our feelings and values in order to follow rules and regulations, this can often lead to bad decisions or situations later on.
By following rules and regulations or ignoring our values and emotions, we are taking a chance on what could happen if something were to go wrong. Human beings aren’t perfect, so why make our decisions based on something that could change when we think it’s unlikely it will? We need to use common sense when deciding whether or not a rule is still valid.
For example, I have a friend named Shawn who has always followed the rules. He’s been driving since he was 15, he gets good grades in school and he always stands when the flag is raised at his high school. Shawn also has a sister who is just as perfect. She is nice to all her friends and never breaks any rules, but she also never plays sports or engages in any activities outside of school. Her parents and teachers don’t allow her to go outside to play, they tell her that it won’t do her any good to be out there all alone, so she never does it. She was homeschooled because her parents believed public schools didn’t prepare their children properly. All she did was sit at home like a brainwashed zombie and do nothing with her life while her brother went out and did everything, despite their parents’ rules.
This is a very simple example of following the rules, but you can see where things can go wrong. Why follow rules when they don’t seem to apply anymore? Our sense of understanding should guide our decisions, not some bylaw or rule book. Shawn didn’t have to follow the same rules as his sister, especially ones that made no sense to him. Sometimes you have to find what’s right for you.
As you can see, following a rule without thinking can lead to either an unhappy life or even worse, a life that could be ruined. I feel there are three levels to following rules and regulations:
1) Unquestioning obedience: You don’t question the rules because it isn’t in your best interest to change them. You don’t think about the consequences because it’s easier and safer than taking risks. When someone tells you not to do something or not get involved in something, even if they provide no explanation as to why, this is an example of unquestioning obedience.
2) Unthinking obedience: You don’t question the rules because you know it only makes sense to follow them. You know there are consequences if you break them. Sometimes following rules is mandatory, and this can be a good thing. If people didn’t stop at stop signs and walked out into traffic every day, we wouldn’t have school buses or teachers in public schools anymore. If people didn’t have to follow school rules, schools would be no better than a prison for people who hadn’t done anything wrong because of incidents like those that happen in prisons all the time.
3) Thinking obedience: You think about what will happen if you do something, but you also pay attention to possible consequences that could result. This is the ideal form of seeing things through. It makes sense when there are both good and bad options as well as potential consequences.
You can see that people can fall in one of these three levels based on the situation they are in, and because people are not perfect, they have a tendency to make mistakes and fall somewhere around this spectrum. But the important thing to take away from this idea is that when you follow rules or try to live your life by them, you must be aware of how life will be affected whether or not you judge a rule’s validity. You must think about your situation and what’s best for you. And this is why following rules or other forms of regulations has such a negative effect on people.
Follow the rules and they’ll let you do more; break them and they’ll lock you away in a prison. It’s just not worth it. You should always try to find out for yourself whether or not something is right for you or if it is possible it could have repercussions if done incorrectly. The safest choice is often the one that isn’t made, but even the safest choice might not be right for everyone.
If you go to the beach at night and it’s raining, it’s not necessarily wrong to get wet. But if you do, be sure to bring an umbrella to protect yourself. Also remember that when it’s raining, people don’t have to stay in the protective shelter of a car or shelter. They can stand on the beach under an overhang or go home. Staying in a car is not safer than getting soaked by the rain unless someone locked you inside with the windows rolled up and made you drive at high speeds until the storm passed so you wouldn’t get wet since no one would know where you were if they saw your headlights.
cONCLUSION
There are many people trapped in lives they don’t want, who follow rules when they don’t understand the consequences, or who only think about the rules and never the situation that could be involved. They even think they understand, but in that way, being ignorant is not a bad thing. Ignorance usually means you will learn as you go along by making mistakes and learning from them. Most of all, it means making your own decisions without having to always question every new thing every time it happens. Most people would rather make their decisions based on what has already happened or what others have said than to base them on personal experience and keeping themselves safe.