It’s My Life, My Rules But should we follow them?

Now when I am scribbling over the keyboard, with my spectacles on and wrinkles that are a display of my years of experience, I am hardly unaware that it is not a life that I had been living all through. I have been so engrossed in society and its demands that I don’t know if there is anything for me or if did I do anything that could give me some happiness.

I have always been living a life that others had left me with or dictated to me. Since I was born, labels were inscribed on what to do and what not, the life rules which I would hardly understand. And when I started growing up I started to take it upon myself to live the same as dictated.  

This is not only my story, but all the women and even men of today who are passing their time under the pretext of one or the other rule which is instilled in our minds since we are born. The question that keeps on perplexing in some corners of my mind is, “are these rules giving me happiness, am I really happy?”

Just ask yourself while sitting in one corner of your room. You will yourself get the answer, which is there is in fact no definite meaning of happiness. It comes when we are pleased about ourselves, and our family and friends.  

Till now, we have never understood life though we are as successful as Bill Clinton, or as the richest Bollywood or Hollywood star, we still are not able to comprehend the minute nuisances of it. Several of our leaders, philosophers, religious gurus,  and many other learned men have been explaining to us the real meaning and essence of life, yet we are so surcharged in the different quandaries, that we are not able to maintain our statuesque and understand how we are living and what is a life for us?  

The main reason is that we are so much in pursuit of the different conventions as framed for us by society that we are not able to understand what we want, or what our heart is actually saying.  

But can we ignore that we are surrounded by the rules as if around us there are only rules and rules; how to sit is a rule, how to sit on a dining table a rule, how to sit in front of guests and how to sit with friends there is a rule? Then there are varied rules of eating, sleeping, walking, talking, dressing, etc………..it’s endless. If I start writing about it, pages will be filled and even Microsoft word documents will get perplexed and will not regret saying, Oh My Gosh!

As I am writing it, I remember scenes from the movie Titanic where its heroine is sad and upset only because she didn’t want to follow the rules as being prescribed to her by her noble and upper-class society. She wanted to fly like a bird, swim like a fish, and dance like crazy boys and girls of the lower class. This is a reason why she got acquainted with a lower-middle-class boy, who did not have even his own home, but he was free. He can do anything he wants; gamble, spit, laugh, run, dance, and anything that his heart says. And we were all sympathetic towards that young beautiful girl as somehow or at some point or the other, we are finding our lives quite similar to her.  

Since the day I was born, I had been crying and giving smiles my stomach was full, but as I exchanged hands, my ears started reeling with many narratives. My granny would say, “Isko honey chatter”, and aunts and uncles started their versions of rules on what to do with me and what not to do.

As a child of two years, I could do anything that I wanted to, roll, kick, scroll, throw the toys here and there and suck. But hold here is a rule for me too. I cannot write anything on the wall when I tried to scrabble on it with a pen which I get hold of. Hahaha! You would laugh at it, but understand what’s going on in the child’s mind? A child wants to create and experiment.   

But are these rules to live by nasty? Our wisdom says not, as they are created to keep us safe, and happy, and for us to flourish. 

 Then we all know there are societal rules and laws that we all as its citizens have to abide by, after all, we are all social animals.

But as the coin as two sides so there are some negative implications of the rules too:   

• Rules hinder us to travel as we are restricted to move in foreign lands.

• Our need to quench for soul satisfaction is obstructed as we are not able to do much about what we feel strongly about.

• A certain essence of negative and sadness is created in our surroundings.

Katherine Hepburn rightly said, “If you obey all the rules you’ll miss all the fun”, obviously if we obey all the rules, we will be deprived of fun. So we can break the rules from time to time to enjoy it. But wrinkles on my face say, I am satisfied with my life, as my child is settled and I have become a writer.

I will only say in the end that dare to be different, dare to do something that is conventionally not a rule but do it sensibly, as our life is not only ours but of our loved ones too.