RULE TO BREAK

“No one is perfect”

This fake Rule is too often just an excuse for making bad choices. Of course we don’t always get it right, we’re not always perfect, but if we follow that as a principle it just becomes a get-out clause.

Listen, every single day of our lives we are faced with an immense number of choices. And each and every one of them usually boils down to a simple choice between being on the side of the angels or the beasts.^* Which are you going to pick? Or did you not even realize what was going on? Let me explain. Every action we take has an effect on our family, people around us, society, the world in general. And that effect can be positive or negative – it’s usually our choice. And sometimes it is a difficult choice. We get torn between what we want and what is good for others: personal satisfaction or magnanimity.

Look, no one said this was going to be easy. And making the decision to be on the side of the angels is often a tough call. But if we want to succeed in this life – in terms of how close we get to generating self-satisfaction, happiness, contentment – then we consciously have to do this. This can be what we dedicate our lives to – angels and not beasts.

If you want to know if you have already made the choice, just do a quick check of how you feel and how you react if someone cuts in front of you in a line of traffic in the rush hour. Or when you’re in a big hurry and someone stops you to ask for directions. Or if your brother or best friend gets in trouble with the police. Or when you lend money to a friend and they don’t pay it back. Or if your boss calls you a fool in front of the rest of your colleagues. Or your neighbour’s trees start to encroach on your property. Or you hit your thumb with a hammer. Or, or, or. As I said, it is a choice we have to make every day, lots of times. And it has to become a conscious choice to be effective.

Now, the problem is that no one is going to tell you exactly what constitutes an angel or a beast. Here you are going to have to set your own parameters. But come on, it can’t be that difficult. I think an awful lot of it is self-evident. Does it hurt or hinder? Are you part of the problem or the solution? Will things get better or worse if you take certain actions? You have to make this choice for yourself alone.

It is your interpretation of what is an angel or beast that counts. There is no point telling anyone else they are on the side of the beasts, as they may have a totally different definition. What other people do is their choice and they won’t thank you for telling them otherwise. You can of course watch as an impassive, objective observer and think to yourself: ‘I wouldn’t have done it like that’, or ‘I think they just chose to be an angel’, or even, ‘Gosh, how beastly’. But you don’t have to say anything.