The ones that are, you’ll know because you chose them.
I spent a good chunk of university being told I should go to lectures, should network at careers fairs, should follow the path that the department had laid out for physics graduates as if someone had sat down and figured out the optimal route through life and all I had to do was not deviate. And I tried for a while, I really did, but at some point I started asking “who made this rule and why should I care” and it turned out that most of the time the answer was nobody in particular and you probably shouldn’t. Nobody was going to fail me for skipping a lecture that taught me less than a textbook did in half the time, and nobody was keeping score on whether I showed up to the networking drinks where everyone stood around pretending to enjoy warm white wine and conversation about internship applications. I’m convinced those events exist purely so universities can photograph them for the prospectus.
I quit my first job in finance after three days because the “rule” was you stay at least a year, and I stayed at university parties where I didn’t know anyone because the “rule” was you should put yourself out there, and I applied to graduate schemes I didn’t want because the “rule” was you should keep your options open, and at some point I realised I was living my entire life according to rules that nobody I respected had ever endorsed. They were just floating around in the atmosphere like background noise and I’d been obeying them the way you obey a “please keep off the grass” sign even when the grass clearly doesn’t give a shit and you’re the only person in the park.
That’s how you know a rule is real. Not because someone put up a sign, but because you’d lose sleep if you didn’t follow it.
The rules I care about are ones I made myself and they’re very short. I got married last year on Valentine’s Day, which yes is the most basic date I could have picked but I didn’t choose it for the creativity points, and the promise I made that day is a rule I’ll keep for the rest of my life. I will take care of my parents no matter what. Those two aren’t negotiable and I don’t need anyone to enforce them because I’d feel it immediately if I broke them. That’s how you know a rule is real. Not because someone put up a sign, but because you’d lose sleep if you didn’t follow it.
Everything else is a suggestion that somebody forgot to label as optional, and I wish someone had told me that at 18 because I would have skipped a lot of bad parties and a lot of worse conversation.
Aryan