Don't feed the dog raisins

Rules are made to be broken.
Color inside the lines.
Don't trust anyone over 30.
Never mix, never worry.

I've been taking inventory of the rules filed away in my mind and it's nothing short of alarming.  No wonder I get to feeling paralyzed sometimes.  It is truly impossible to follow all of the laws, by-laws, suggestions, rules and principles that have accumulated over the years.  Do you suppose there is a special container in some part of the brain for storage of these maxims?

It's enough to make a person throw the whole package overboard and start from scratch. How would I go about that? It would take knowing myself well enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.

You must eat 24 grams of fiber every day.
150 minutes of exercise per week is an absolute minimum.
The body requires 8 hours of sleep per night.
Floss daily.

Every time I look at the news online or pick up a magazine, there's yet another miraculous cure or life-extending practice being touted.  Forget everything you thought you knew about ... (cancer, alzheimers, obesity, addiction, baldness, night-blindness) ... this singular suggestion will trump them all.

Potatoes make you fat.
Short people live longer.
Laptops cause cancer.

It is as though, even knowing that nobody --- NOBODY --- gets out of this alive, the drive toward immortality and perfection is intrinsic in every exhortation from Weightwatchers to Pat Robertson. Somehow, if I only do this, think that, imagine the other, read, pray, meditate, jog, play, admit, surrender, I will escape the only known outcome for being alive ----death.

Living by the rules may make things easier.  I don't want to have to consider every step, every action.  That would be paralyzing, too.  But living by somebody else's rules, without consideration, not only ties me up in contradictions, but absolves me of responsibility.

I was only following orders.
The boss told me I had to.
The Bible said so.
Because I'm your mother, that's why.

I cannot escape the necessity of doing the work. I can listen, I can consider, and sometimes I can even imitate, but ultimately, I have to take responsibility for my own rules of the road.  And that road, like it or not,  leads to the ending place.

Do you suppose there are flags at the finish line?  And hot dogs? And hugs?