Bending the Rules

When we say life is a teacher, it is something I feel like a lot of us don't really give a lot of thoughts to, until something happens to us, something either good or bad (but most times mainly bad), then we really realize the true meaning of those words.

Back in the day, I used to be one of those guys who would say that I would never do this or I would never do that, until life happened to me, and I found myself shamelessly doing those same things that I had swore never to do.

This is why I'm a strong believer of 'hearing both sides of the story' because most times, it is often easy for us to say that this person shouldn't have done this or that, simply because we're not in the same situation as them, whereas if we were, we probably would have done a lot worse.

Sometime last year, I had a misunderstanding with a friend of mine over some money issue. He had made a statement to me that I felt no true friend should make, so I had decided to cut him off and never speak to him again.

And I didn't, for months, until one particular time where I found myself battling for my life and after exhausting all of the lifelines that I had at the time, I was left with the option to either call this person and ask for their help, or die.

Now there's no amount of ego on this planet earth, or any other planet for that matter that is worth my life, so I did the sane thing here, I called, asked for help and luckily for me, they were kind enough to look past our entire problem and help me, probably because they knew that it was my life at stake.

After I survived that, I sat in my room one day thinking about the whole thing and basically just understanding the lessons that particular encounter thought me.

Mind you, I'm not saying that everything we do is justifiable based on the situation we're in, all I'm saying is that it's not really a bad thing to cut ourselves some slack every now and then with the rules and regulations that we've given to ourselves.

_{photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters}

Yes, those rules help shape and direct our lives, but would it be a life worth living if those rules make us unhappy during the long run?

That is something we should ask ourselves.