Rules to Live By

“Make your own rules, if you make your own rules you'll stay right,” the man laughed and leaned back. The only other person in the room was a young man, leaning against the opposite wall, he looked like he was almost asleep but the man knew he was paying attention. “You know what I'm saying Rick?”

“Yeah, don't follow other people's rules,” said the young man in his sleepy voice.

“No, no, you don't get it at all,” said the man. “I'm not telling you to go off a rebel. That won't get you anywhere in this world.”

“So what did you mean?” asked Rick lazily.

“I mean you've got to have your own code you live by.”

“What sort of code?” asked the young man. He still didn't seem very interested by the other man had known him his whole life and knew that was just his way. His nephew had been born looking bored the man suspected.

“What code you live by is up to you, that's what makes it yours,” said the man. Then he stood, patted his nephew on the back and went into the kitchen to say goodbye to his sister, the young man's mother.

The next day the man got onto the army airplane and left for war. He is considered among the many dead of the war, though they never found an actual body. This was the last conversation he had with his nephew, the last words they spoke to one another, which is perhaps the reason the young man thought about them so much. Thinking about them as much as he did he made them his own, they became his words to live by. Don't be a rebel but have a code, one that's all yours.

The young man didn't rush his choices about how to live and he didn't create his list all at once. He thought about each and inspected every one, tasting them and getting their feel. By his second year of high school he had found the first thing he considered to be important enough to put on the list, honesty

It wasn't as if the young man had ever been much of a liar to start with. He had always told the truth so long as the truth wouldn't do him any harm. Like everyone else though when it looked like telling the truth would get him in trouble he would stretch it and manipulate it to his convenience. This only worked for so long. Soon people started to ask questions that Rick would rather not answer and when he would tell them something other then the truth he would discover they had known the truth the whole time and were just testing him. It was these multiple traps that people set for him that had him finally decide it was easier to get yelled at right away then make people more angry and get yelled at later.

This policy of honesty started to transfer over to other things. It soon became honesty in general and it hadn't even been with the intention of finding something to live his life by that he started to live in as much honesty as is possible for a imperfect human. It was only one day that he was once again thinking about his uncle's parting words that the young man discovered that he had a entry in his code of rules already, honesty had become a way of life.

With his first rule quickly came the second, they fed into one another, his second rule caused by his first. Honesty in life is a good thing until you start saying things in a hurtful way, or when it isn't solicited, honest or not. There was a difference between being an honest person and being cruel and Rick started to become unpopular. He was forced to reassess what he had been doing, he was young, and didn't always see things right away but it didn't take long for him to realize that it was bad to say things just because they were what you were thinking. It wasn't any less honest to just say nothing at all.

To be continued...