Back to the Mixing Bowl
I like rules. I always have. Rules create boundaries and help you understand what’s expected and what isn’t. But as much as I follow rules, I think I break them just as often.
I’ve never put much stock in the arbitrary. I’ve never believed in following a rule just because I’m supposed to. It’s the logic behind the rule that matters to me. If I can understand why a rule exists, then okay. But if the reasoning stops at because you’re supposed to, well, those rules might as well be written in faded pencil.
This evening alone, I broke at least three. The most blatant of rules was climbing through a fence on my run. It was the boundary fence between the campground and the road. I had already ran down to the main entrance, but following the rules meant running on the shoulder of a much too busy road. Honestly, it felt safer to break the rules. So, I did.
Once out on the roads, I absolutely followed the no trespassing signs and the purple blazes. Private property is private property, and there is no reason to push those boundaries in the rural midwest. But after a few miles of rule following, I ducked right back through the fence on my return route. And I’m sure I’ll do it again tomorrow. Or the next day. Or both.
It’s funny the rules we follow and the rules we disregard. I wonder how we each choose.
Maybe it’s like one of those baking shows where you get a basket of ingredients and you’re supposed to make something delicious from what’s inside. But we didn’t all get the same baskets, or the same cook stations. Some of us will have linear recipes to follow, and some of us will need to figure out how to bake a cake over a campfire. All of us will need to find a way to make it work.
We make sense of our worlds a tablespoon at a time. Life does its rollercoaster thing every day, and we have to roll with what we have. Maybe we have a say in what lines we stand in, but we don’t really have control over what happens on the ride. It’s like mixing the ingredients together, then crossing your fingers while your creation bakes. Could be great. Could be a disaster, or somewhere in the middle.
Even if we did have all the same ingredients in our baskets and the same recipe, each bake will turn out different. There are too many variables we each bring to the table. Like our weird Himalayan colored sea salts and organic quail eggs. A recipe becomes merely a suggestion at that point. Or maybe that’s when we realize it was just a suggestion all along.
Recipes and rules have a lot in common. They are ideas, suggestions, and steps designed to help things turn out good enough. But good enough for who? I’ve always thought there is only one acceptable answer to that question. Good enough for you.
We get to write our own rules and alter our recipes as we go. And testing out variations is half the fun of baking. The other half is getting good enough to write your own recipes from scratch, inventing new treats. It’s in the mixing bowl that we can stir up our own rules too.
If we all followed the same rules, the world wouldn’t be as colorful. There might be less bad things, but there would probably be less good things too. Less conflict, but less innovation. Without some people being willing to push the boundaries, there would just be… less.
My rules work for me, but I don’t expect them to work for everyone else. How could they? No one else is exactly me at exactly this point in life with exactly the same priorities. Some rules probably apply, but rules are not one size fits all.
One size fits you is more accurate. There’s always enough room in the pastry case for that.
