the rules you live by

Oct 8

Dear Reader,

When I have to turn down an invitation, I rarely just say no. I'll write the text a couple of times, looking for a reason that sounds solid enough, something that makes it clear I had no real choice in the matter. I'll usually add more detail than anyone asked for, and by the time I hit send the message has gotten a good deal longer than it needed to be.

I have a friend who does none of this. Someone asks if he can make it to something and he says he can't, but thank you for thinking of him, and that's the end of it. For a long time it bothered me more than I could explain. It seemed abrupt, almost rude, though nobody he said it to ever seemed to mind.

It took me a while to see that the problem was mine. Somewhere along the way I picked up a rule that if I was going to let someone down, I needed a good reason for it, and just saying ‘no’ never felt like enough. I'd been following that rule for decades without ever putting it into words, and watching him skip it so easily was the first time I really noticed it.

That's how a lot of these rules come into view, I think. From the inside they feel like common sense, so we rarely catch them directly. Where they tend to show up is in a small flash of irritation when someone else gets away with something we'd never allow ourselves. Most of the beliefs we've been looking at over these past few weeks reach our actual days this way, as quiet rules about what we're allowed to do and what we have to earn first.

I don't think the answer is to start breaking all of them. Plenty of the rules we carry are good ones, like keeping our word and treating people gently, and they are worth learning. The ones worth a second look tend to be the ones built on fear, rules that ask us to keep earning something that was already given freely.

If I'm honest, part of what bothered me about my friend was that I wanted the same ease she had in letting a simple answer stand. There's an old teaching about letting your yes be yes and your no be no, and I'd always taken it as a lesson in honesty. Lately it reads to me as a kind of relief too. A plain answer, given kindly, may not need nearly as much defending as I've been giving it.

Yours in the journey,