Are They Rules? Or Are They Truths?

It was a Friday at 10:45 AM. I was rolling up my yoga mat after a 75-minute vinyasa flow. As I stood up to leave, I was met with a “hello” from Rich, my 70 year old yogi acquaintance (now retired).

“How are things going? What’s been going on with work?!”

Cool as a cucumber, I told Rich (who used to own an amazing neighborhood taco franchise), “You know, just freelancing for now. I just can’t be in offices, Rich! The lighting is bad for my skin and the shared air makes me bloated. I just need to find something that lets me keep my freedom.”

Sweetly and promptly, Rich responded, “All these rules! So interesting!”

The word “rules” ricocheted off my chest as soon as it hit. And then I – as Carrie Bradshaw did so many times – “got to thinking.” Why is it that things I believe to be truths about who I am and what I know about myself are perceived as rules?

For YEARS, I’ve been prompted by friends and loved ones (and only one therapist) to be “open-minded” and try things I think I won’t like because there’s a chance I’ll end up liking them.

If you’re in your twenties with a full-time job, you should be traveling more. If you’re traveling all the time, you should be getting more work experience. If you’re dating someone seriously, you should have a bunch of casual experiences instead. If you’re only having casual experiences, you should enter a committed relationship immediately. The list is endless and all it does is engender an overall sense of distrust in any given person…

“Annie, you’ve said you don’t like online dating or dating in general? Don’t get in your own way!”

“Annie, you don’t like traveling with friends? Just go. And try Santa Fe!”

“Annie, you don’t like eating dairy because it makes you break out? Maybe you just haven’t tried the right kind of dairy!”

“Annie, you’ve had 10 different full-time jobs and you don’t think you want to commit to one job environment? That’s because you haven’t found the perfect place for you… yet!”

Throughout my young adulthood, people felt very comfortable telling me what all of my defense mechanisms were and how I couldn’t possibly know what I did or didn’t like. “Too young to know!” Millennials and their parents cried.

Every time I received unsolicited feedback, I took it to heart, wondering why I had the pathology to get in my own way so often – making my world smaller and setting myself up to be an unsuccessful old maid with “No” as my only option. I would force myself into situations that made me needlessly uncomfortable, jobs that made me sick, and dates that made me dissociate; all the while blaming myself for not enjoying these circumstances more.

Only recently (as I entered my third decade of life), have I realized that these perceived “rules” or “barriers” I had created were actually just truths about myself.

We, as a society, idolize people who have managed to savor freedom while earning a remarkable wage and building a stable life. We also greatly respect those who have chosen less risky paths and have become experts, specialists, and thought leaders in all that they do.

I find it curious that, as young people, we’re often told to experience everything as we’re developing into functional human beings (with a working frontal lobe). People project onto up-and-coming youth as if they’re blank canvases, waiting to be Jackson Pollock-ed all over the place. If you’re in your twenties with a full-time job, you should be traveling more. If you’re traveling all the time, you should be getting more work experience. If you’re dating someone seriously, you should have a bunch of casual experiences instead. If you’re only having casual experiences, you should enter a committed relationship immediately. The list is endless and all it does is engender an overall sense of distrust in any given person, who is still wondering if someone else has more of an answer to all of this “life stuff” than they do.

What is most perplexing, I find, is that generations are always asked to look up to those who did life differently, managing to live outside of the box. We, as a society, idolize people who have managed to savor freedom while earning a remarkable wage and building a stable life. We also greatly respect those who have chosen less risky paths and have become experts, specialists, and thought leaders in all that they do.

So why is it that when I, a 30 year old woman, say that I know I don’t want a conventional career path or one income stream, that I am instructed to ponder if that is really true, or worse: that I’m somehow putting myself off-path by not having more experiences that I already know I don’t want.

I’m learning that it is very tempting to believe that, in a time where everything is readily-available at our fingertips, we’re meant to touch and feel everything around us, no matter what our guts tell us. But maybe the secret is keeping that filter of what we know to be true about ourselves, accepting the experiences we may never have, and trying to create more of the ones that feel good.

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