Break Rules

I once sent Annie Mueller a note about how it seemed like she was listening to our lives and writing helpful essays to support us. It’s happened many times.

This morning on our British Summer Time walk, Lisa was leaning hard into ignoring traffic lights. I accused her of being a rule-follower, except in this glaring case.

(I am a rule follower; in this particular case I have Olle’s words to me in mind, about Copenhagen traffic, from years ago: “When the rules are ignored, people die.” I realize as I write this that I may have conflated Olle and Jack Nicholson.)

Coming back home, I found this in my feeds:

Break dumb rules. Break arbitrary small rules (or don’t). Break rules that exist only to create convenience for one group of people. Break rules that are immoral even if they’re not illegal. Whenever you can, break rules that exist only to uphold a system. It’s important.

Don’t break the rules that define who you are…

…Unless that’s not who you want to be anymore.

In addition to marking Lisa in the right (traffic lights sacrifice pedestrians for the convenience of cars), Mueller’s words are helpful in a larger therapeutic way: they hit me square in the middle of a “maybe this isn’t who I want to be anymore” phase. 

Keep listening, please.