SETTLED RULES = LAW OF THE LAND

When settled rules are ignored they get angry.

Common courtesy wants to fight.

Good manners want a go in the octagon.

Eventually things calm down in what I understand is called ‘normalized’, as in:

The New Normal.

The social body, the modern world, the current state of affairs, all depend on settled rules.

To say those rules are also called laws is not much of a stretch.

So we follow laws to navigate a shared world.

Before you trail off thinking about different countries, different cultures, and different laws, I’m talking about your work commute, your roof, the basic needs.

No confusion so far? Good.

Since few of us live off the grid, grow our own food, and make our own clothes and shoes, we learn to cooperate with the electric company, the grocer, and the tailor.

We learn to accept power from coal fired electric plants, food from corporate farms, and clothes from cheap labor in Asian sweatshops.

Let’s be honest, how often do you even think about coal fired electricity? I know I don’t when I turn on a light.

But when I do:

 

The fundamentals of coal’s decline are unequivocal: It simply costs more to dig up rocks, crush them into powder, and burn them for power than it costs to generate clean energy. This is especially true when environmental costs come into play – utilities can’t economically justify keeping plants open.

 

A bag of organic trimmed broccoli for $5? A pair of water resistant ‘utility’ pants for $19.19.

It’s a steal of a deal at Costco. Put them in the cart and move along.

Those are the settled rules I’m talking about here.

But, how can a pair of pants cost less than twenty bucks in 2024?

 

When I Was Young There Was Only One Pair Of Jeans

Baby boomers wore Levis.

If they didn’t, if they tried to pass in a pair of checked slacks, or green jeans from Sears, forget about it.

Blue jeans, and that was it.

They were a settled rule of style and everyone agreed. If you didn’t agree you might get heckled.

That was life in a small town. If you stood out at all, you stood out more in a small town.

 

Eventually we all learned to follow our own lead and make friends with those on the same path, the same journey.

I may have missed the day on setting goals, but as I added years to my early mature vision, I fixed on the one thing in every topic.

 

Education: Get a college degree and mingle with the co-eds who had private dorm rooms.

Sports: Be a national champion in something.

Running: Do a marathon.

Writing: Finish something for God’s sake.

Family: Team up with a partner who shows signs of going for the long haul.

 

My meager accomplishments haven’t broken any new ground.

New ground to me, of course, but nothing earth shaking outside of that. And that’s how it ought to be.

I depended on settled rules while I stretched a four year history degree from the 1970’s to the 1990’s.

Kudos to me for not giving up, then running my mouth about student loans.

Kudos to you if you’ve done the math.

All in all, getting a college degree felt pretty good at the time.

It was quite a chase, especially when the requirements for graduation were about to time-out and I’d have to take classes over if I didn’t kick it in the ass.

Luckily I had a wife with just the right shoe.

All educated people know that the true goal of learning is understanding people who are not on your path, who are not on your journey, but their own.

Fight me.

 

Law Of The Land = Settled Rules

Before getting into it, think of your body as running on settled rules.

You eat, sleep, work; you love, pray, embrace; you function like a coal fired electric plant minus the pollution, or the degree of pollution, when you light up a room with your smile.

Then some mutated fucking cancer cell gets loose and goes wild and all hell breaks loose.

The scientific solution is killing the cancer cells without killing the host, which is you or me or someone you know.

With any luck we make it to recovery and live in the New Normal as a cancer survivor.

With the best of luck we put it all behind us and build on the life we had before cancer said hello.

 

This works in our body, and wait for it, the social body, the modern world, and the current state of affairs.

Take the notion of a democracy, for example, where citizens vote for people to represent them in the law-making chambers.

Such representatives are the citizens’ voice.

When citizens aren’t happy with their voice, the vote them out.

Then came the new normal where the one voted out didn’t want to leave.

In sports there is a saying:

 

SCOREBOARD

 

From my list under sports? I didn’t win a national wrestling championship, I came in third.

Even from this distance over time, I know I was cheated by a shitty ref’s timid call. I pinned the guy three times, but?

 

SCOREBOARD

 

I did run a marathon. My goal was doing it under three hours.

From one unfortunate mishap to another I finished in 3:32.

I was disappointed, but:

 

SCOREBOARD

One of the greatest benefits to human society is working with settled rules, agreeing on the laws of the land.

Only a fool would put on their garden boots and set out to run a marathon. That’s not how it works.

You set a goal, set a time, pick a race, and start slow. Then after checking training times you adjust.

Normal people don’t bring up their regrets all the time and whine it out until they’re certain they did run under three hours.

I’ll stand my 3:32 up beside the best.

 

Only a fool would hitch-hike from North Bend to Iowa City, Iowa with a jockstrap in their pocket to wrestle for a national championship.

It takes training and discipline and coaching and a good travel partner. (Hey Stu)

No one does it on a lark, like “Oh, what are you doing today? Hitch-hiking to Iowa to win a national championship? Have fun honey.”

It takes strength and cunning to face the best wrestlers in the nation only to fall because some pencil-neck ref didn’t know the rules well enough to call a touch-fall. Three times.

Is it fair to ask what kind of loser, what kind of whiney bitch, can’t take their wins and losses in stride?

Yes, it’s fun and exciting to win to big race, defeat the evil dragon, but if that’s not how it turned out, then look for the fun and excitement in making the effort.

After you’re done recalibrating your regrets into valuable learning moments, could you run out and bring me a trophy and a juice box to show you understand the participation part?

Thank you. In advance.