The rules we live by

Driving in the city, I swung into a lane on the wrong side of a median and as I sat there waiting to turn, realized that within a few light changes, traffic would be driving head-on into the lane currently blocked by my car. I was a sitting duck. While traffic signals changed, cars filled the intersection as they went their respective ways. It will be a disaster, I thought, as my eyes darted about for a solution. Next to me, where I wanted to be, a driver sitting in his car made eye contact. He knew that I knew that I was in the wrong place. His light turned green; he waited and waved me ahead first. I waved to him as I gratefully swung into the intersection and away from my mistake. He smiled back.
I can remember clearly that the scariest thing about learning how to drive was remembering all the rules. In fact, that is what a lot of the driver's test is all about: the rules of the road.
Driving is one instance where we count on each other to not break any of the rules. Yet in spite of our commitment to each other, accidents happen. But we continue to drive in good faith, believing that everyone will follow the rules.
Yet rules can be frustrating. How we seethe when a company or institution tells us, "We cannot do that for you."
It feels to me that there are more and more rules to abide by each day. Most of these rules are to optimize our health, our safety and our ability to live close to each other without it feeling like the wild west.
What's in our food, when that food will expire, food and drug inspection, vehicle safety, building standards, water quality standards, toy testing, boards which govern the actions of professional behaviour  . . . and the list goes on.
We all love to see that the rules are followed, until we are the ones who need some manoeuvring room. Then it is easy to see that the rules should be more flexible. We all enjoy the feeling of a rule being interpreted in a special way, just for us . . . until we imagine that the rules are being bent for everyone.
I have a friend who loves to play games. But be warned: she knows all the rules to every game and I once made the mistake of laughing when she hung fast to how we should officially kick off a Scrabble game. Woe was me. She grew up with 12 brothers and sisters, she admonished. There have to be rules, you see.
You need rules to guide you when learning to speak or spell any language. But true fluency in any language comes when you know which rules get broken regularly.
Sometimes, you can break the rules and no one will know except you. That is usually the moment you decide whether you want to live in a world where you think everyone would break a rule if they could -- and not get caught. The alternative, of course, is to trust that in the safe world we inhabit, everyone is as honest and law-abiding as us.
But that last notion flies out the window every day when the news we see and hear is that of people breaking the rules. The crimes we commit against each other break important rules. We aren't supposed to kill or hurt or cheat or steal.  There are too many rules broken to list in this space.
We have rules for our children and rules for our spouses, our family members, our friends and really, everyone in our lives.
As a child, playing softball with the kids who lived near me was a challenge: we had to make our own rules and the four, five or seven of us playing had to collectively enforce the rules. With experience, we tended to squeeze out anyone who demonstrated that they didn't want to play by our rules. If only it were that easy in the adult world. Sometimes, it takes a while to figure out who plays by the rules. Sometimes, you're the only one who sees that someone is breaking all the rules. Sometimes you have to stand up and fight because you can't always take your ball and go home.
If you want to consider whether a rule makes sense or not, try explaining it to a child; there is no better way to explore the logic and raison-d'être for  all the rules which dominate our lives.
When my father lay sick in the hospital and my mother stayed with him, I was to stay overnight at my aunt's hotel. Although right across the road from home, it was still scary for me, at 11 years old, to sleep in such a large place. The carpets were vacuumed every day. Guests came and went all the time. My aunt kept a close eye on every piece of her establishment.
But her sister, visiting from Alberta, was different, somehow.
Bringing me in from a summer evening of riding my new bicycle around, Aunt Laura considered what to do, as she eyed the mud-caked tires.  To my horror, she suddenly held open the door to the hotel and told me to bring it in. We wheeled my dirty bike through the main lobby to a back dining room, right across my aunt's pristine carpet.
She looked at me conspiratorially.  In that glance, I realized that some rules weren't necessarily important to everyone.
My father died that summer. But that small kindness which put me ahead of the rules at a time when nothing seemed to be following any rules has always stayed with me.
Indeed: we must live by rules and hope that all will run smoothly. But in the end, it isn't the rules which matter so much as the people who know when to use the same good judgement used to create the rules to do the right thing.