Rules.
Day five. 100 days does seem incredibly long now.
I’m a sucker for rules. Really. Always have been. It’s one of those things that upon reflection I really think is a part of my genetic make-up. More nature than nurture.
As fancy-monkeys, we are pattern-seekers. A trait developed for us to survive. Those berries make us sick. These clouds mean it’s going to rain. Don’t piss off the chief or you’ll be banished. Rules.
And up until a point, this pretty much worked for me. The systems around me were also based on rules. This amount of marks means this grade on a test. Do these three things and you’ll get this reward. Luckily the private school system in South Africa was as anal as I was.
Sidenote: A hilariously visual example of this upbringing, is that when I moved to Switzerland at 17 and attended school without a uniform for the first time in my life, I dressed very, very, strangely. And not in a cool, rebellious way. In a polo-neck under a lacy-shirt kind of way.
Also, Switzerland, a country full of great-rule lovers. I was home.
But then there were little disturbances in the force. Sometimes people would break the rules, and nothing would happen. Hmm. But then other people would break them and get the prescribed punishment. And then more irregularities — the people enforcing the rules weren’t doing it systematically. It seemed rules weren’t broken technically if no one caught you breaking them.
Now, I know that sounds a little bit baby-dictator of me, but I do still think I had a point. These systems seemed to me to reward those who did not adhere to them, whilst giving no similar reward to those who followed them. Why hand in an essay on time if people are allowed to hand them in two weeks late? Why show up on time to have to wait for the last 20 students to dribble into the lecture hall? Okay yes, I do sound like a little baby-dictator. Maybe I am. More on that later.
Basically, I was naively learning that the world is unfair. Deeply, painfully, and without reason, unfair. Often cruel. Regularly dispassionate about the lives of the most vulnerable. From people arriving late to meetings to illegal wars being waged based on little to no evidence. From the mass incarceration of vulnerable groups to the rich and privileged sinking the 2008 economy and walking away not only scot-free, but with golden parachutes.
Tough lesson, kiddo. The world is unfair. There are all these rules that we tell other people to follow, and then we don’t follow them ourselves. From road rules, to governments, to economies. Honestly I get continuously pissed off that people still teach Econ 1 students supply and demand.
So, where is a rule-abiding psycho with a conscious to go in this world? Inward, is what I’m learning.
In all of this, I hadn’t learned my own internal compass. I didn’t actually know what I liked, what I thought, what I wanted. I always looked out, to others, to the media, to teachers and priests and celebrities and lecturers. What must I do? Am I doing it right? How must I dress, eat, think, be?
I somehow learned how to think fairly independently in so many aspects of my life. In fact I was so passionate about my job because it was one of the firs spaces where I wasn’t afraid, where I was comfortable challenging the status quo and interrogating the why and how of what we were doing. There I could really dig into these hypocrisies.
But it took a bit longer to trickle into my own personal headspace.
So. Here I am. My name is Lisa and I’m a recovering rule-aholic.
Until tomorrow.
x
