Rules for No One
April 19, 2025•391 words
We pass down shit that we don’t even ask why. Rules, habits, unquestioning nonsense. And when we ask what is the meaning? There’s no answer or irritation. Because this is how we do things! Just like a dog licks its balls and when you ask him to stop he looks dumbfounded.
But it’s ok, the dog doesn’t need to explain himself. He can lick his balls all day and live and die a happy dog. But as humans, so much of our unhappiness comes from following rules for the sake of rules. For the sake of doing what’s right.
What does that even mean? If you walk your life in a straight line you’ll fall off a cliff sooner or later and as you fall, in that split second, you might just wonder why did such a bad thing happen to me? A good person like me? Because someone taught you that doing good means you get good.
But what is that good? Helping a granny cross the street? Sounds right. Keeping the noise down not to annoy that loser sharing the train compartment with you? Surely it’d be a greater reward if he got up and left and gave you more space?
Rules, that mothers always love their children, yet strange how so many adults are fucked up because of their mothers. But don’t you dare not honour Mother’s Day. Lies and lies passed down from generation to generation. Until one or two can’t let go of the why. Can’t give in to the pressure.
“It is what it is” sticks but doesn’t hold back the questioning. The realisation that few people see themselves and only see the wrongs of others. That they dwell in an illusion of perfection and correctness, judging, fearing, shaking heads, glaring anger at the sinners around them.
And the kid asks you if God created it all and you respond I don’t know. What do you think? And the child says yes, that’s what they told me. And I repeat that I don’t know, and in that moment that I feel I should know, I’m expected to know, the kid looks at me in wonderment at the sight of a parent who doesn’t know the answers.
A parent who understands that a child’s answers are just as true. Just as factual and just as valid.