TANR. There. Are. No. Rules.
One of the hardest truths to accept in the transition from childhood to adulthood is that there are no longer any rules. You have total autonomy on how to spend your life. That is a fact that is grasped from an early age when it comes to fun things. “You can just play video games all day?” But the negative side is not fully considered. If you want to be successful in any way in life, you must put in the work, and you have to determine the rules that you have to follow.
Now, on the flip side: you get to determine the rules that you follow. There is no rule that says that a 23 year old can’t disrupt a decades old industry. There is no rule that say that a 45 year old can’t go back to school to learn to cook. There’s nothing that says you have to have kids, or that you can’t have 13 kids. Once you reach adulthood, everything is up to you. You set your own rules, and that can be both freeing and terrifying. Part of taking responsibility for your life is that you gain responsibility for making it great, but you also must assume responsibility if your life is not going how you wish it to.
There are a few rules that society imposes – things like decorum, or laws. Some are general guidelines, and others are steadfast punishments. If you choose to murder, that is actually your choice, but if you are caught – you will go to jail, or even lose your own life. Nevertheless, that is technically a decision you get to weigh.
Less stark are things like “don’t wear your headphones while someone is talking to you.” Sure, doing so will make you a dick, and will make people less likely to talk to you – but that isn’t a steadfast rule. It’s just a decision with a pretty firm set of consequences.
None of this really goes beyond the “you get to make every decision in your life” type of drivel you get from plenty of self-named self-help gurus. Where this really becomes important is when you are deciding what life you want for yourself. The most common “rule” that people follow is commonly known as the American Dream. Go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, buy a house, grow old, die. The people who break these molds get some common names. Drop out of college? You’re a dropout. Choose not to work? You’re a vagrant or a leech. Don’t want to get married? You’re an old maid. Don’t want kids? You’re selfish.
But things are changing – entrepreneurs are bucking all sorts of molds. They are starting companies at age 20. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both dropped out of college (granted, that college was Harvard, and they did it to run their businesses). Thousands of entrepreneurs decide to take a path of uncertainty, and skip getting a job. Solopreneurs are doing what they love in order to avoid soul-sucking work – the gig economy has changed how we view work itself.
The point of all of this is that while we often feel there are steadfast rules we must follow, in reality we get to make up all the rules. Hate a customer of yours? You can just choose not to serve them any more. Hate the business you’re in? You can just quit and start looking elsewhere. We call the people that do things like this “risk takers” or “crazy”, but really, they’re living life by their own rules. They’re making their own life, and they’re finding meaning where they can.
The rules that often make us most unhappy are the rules that are unwritten. Very few people are unhappy that murder is illegal. But a vastly larger number are unhappy with the idea that they must have a job, even if they hate it. There were entire generations of gay men who married women and had kids, only to eventually realize it’s okay to be with the man they love.
What rules are you following that make you unhappy? How could you start working your way away from them? And are you ready for the reactions that others will throw your way when you start doing what makes you happy?