She wrote a note to her one-year old daughter marked “To be opened on your 18th birthday”. And one to her husband. She got into her car, drove to the highest bridge around, got out of her car and jumped.
As I am writing about it now, I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. It seems strangely distant but it really happened, less than two weeks ago. Her life is over. She was in her mid-twenties. Her explanation was: “I cannot live up to all those expectations”.
I did not know the girl but I wept with my friend – her cousin – when she told me. I wept for the ones she left behind. And I wept for the agony she must have felt. I wept for the fear she must have felt as she got on to the bridge. And I wept at the waste of life.
And it got me thinking about rules. Every “civilized” society sets up a myriad of laws to make everything run smoothly. They make more or less sense. Traditions, habits, norms, rules, regulations and laws are all there to guide us and make a complex world easier to navigate. And then there are the rules we set up for ourselves.
A woman I know told me that she used to carve both ends of a roast before she put it in the oven. One day she stopped herself and though: “WHY do I do this?” She called her mother up and asked her: “Why do we always cut the ends off on the roast?” Her mother said: “I dunno, ask grandma, she’s the one who taught me.” And she called up her grandmother, who told her that when she was first married, their oven was very, very small, so she had to cut the ends off the roast to make it fit. This had grown into a habit so when she got a larger oven, she just continued to do so. A way of doing things, she then passed on to her daughter and her daughter’s daughter.
I too grew up with lots of rules. Wash your hands after going to the toilet. Look people in the eye. Take your shoes off. Say “Please” and “Thank you” and “Bless you” and “You’re welcome”. These are all rules that have hygienic or social advantages. I get those.
And lots of rules are culturally conditioned – in the US it is a clear sign of bad manners to wear white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day. You hold the door for others, you tip the waitress and you don’t fart or burp in public. Other cultures have different rules – I heard that in China it is considered incredibly rude to sneeze and rude NOT to burp after a meal.
Some rules are more dubious: Socks can only ever be one solid colour – white, back or blue. No prints, stripes or patterns. You NEVER put the pots or pans directly on the table – always arrange the food in a nice dish or bowl. Earrings cannot dangle. (It’s “cheap!”) (These are rules, I got from my mother…)
Knowing how much he loved orange jam, I bought a jar for my father-in-law once when we were on holiday. He looked puzzled when I gave it to him and said: “But I only eat red jam when I’m in the cottage”.
I periodically work as a life coach and I once coached a woman about her rules regarding love; Things that needed to be fulfilled for her to feel loved. Her boyfriend had to maintain a certain weight and look, do and say certain things in a certain way, look at her just so etc. I just let her talk while I wrote down all the things she said. When she was done, she had listed 47 things he HAD to do in order to make her feel loved. 47 things. No wonder she rarely felt like he loved her. Once we had identified this she could break her own rules.
It is not that we have to lower our expectations but perhaps we should sometimes look at our rules. Do they make sense? Are our beliefs real? Really real?
Once we see that it just exists in our heads, we can stop limiting ourselves and break the rules.
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