A friend recently sent me another set of rules that he sometimes calls Unconditional Truths. These will make you smile but they won't get you through college (or life) as well as the Nine Rules.
10. Life is sexually transmitted.
9. Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
8. Men have two emotions: hungry and horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.
7. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
6. Some people are like a Slinky. They are not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
5. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
4. All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
3. A slight tax increase will cost you $200.00 yet a substantial tax cut only saves you 30¢.
2. In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
1. We know exactly where one cow with Mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven't got a clue as to where hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of
Agriculture in charge of immigration. Or better yet, let AARP know that Osama is 50 and they will find him wherever he is.
Another Set of Rules
Take Pride in Your Performance
People need to take pride in what they do. There is extraordinary virtue in observing someone who does a job well.
This is true regardless of the nature of the work. I get joy out of watching an expert in just about any field. A good waiter is just as impressive as a brilliant pianist.
Daughter and I disagreed on this point recently. She thought I should feel bad about cross-examining someone to the point that they were destroyed professionally and their testimony had no negative impact on my client. I told her that, like everyone else, it is my job to perform my duties at the highest level. I told her there was virtue in doing that well even if someone was damaged as a result. She was not impressed and thought I should go easy on the witness.
The Nine Rules do not eliminate kindness but they absolutely require performance at the highest level. I am not sure I won the arguement but my position was certainly clear.
The unfortunate fact is that our service culture is at a crisis because so few people take pride in the work they do. What a joy it is to find someone that delivers good service beacause they take pride in their work and understand that service is what they do.
The Nine Rules teaches that there is virtue in doing a job well and that one should take pride in what they do. Rule 2, for example, teaches us that we should do our own work and reject others' efforts to do the work for us. There is nothing more fundamental in the advice to do your own work than the fact that you should do that work well and take pride in it. Rule 6 teaches us that we should never mess up good work. This is another part of taking pride in your work. When it is right, it is finished and until then, there is more work to do.
Anything less than pride in your own performance translates into a lack of success and, if adopted broadly enough, will translate into a deteriorating society.
Applying Rule 8
Rule 8 teaches us that, if you can't tell who the sucker at the table is, it is probably you. This rule, like the others, can be applied in many situations.
Daughter called from college the other evening with what she saw as a simple request. She wanted to know what her math score on the SAT was. I naturally wondered why that would be relevant to a Sophomore in college. She explained that, although she knew I would think she was crazy, she was thinking about taking Statistics and one of the prerequisites was a math score of a certain level on the SAT.
I told her that she was right. I thought she was crazy. Not only is Statistics notoriously difficult, but the concept of a non-numbers person taking a class that required a certain math score on the SAT is very close to insanity.
While the quick way around the issue was not having access to the SAT score, the application of Rule 8 teaches us that taking Statistics in this case would likely make daughter the sucker at that table. Declining to get in that position is the right thing to do. My only real comfort in this case was the fact that she knew, before she called me, that taking Statistics was going to be a bad idea. I would like to think that's because she was applying the Nine Rules.
Rules You Won't Find in the Nine Rules
You are right. We actually gave all of this some thought before we posted our Nine Rules. Here are some of the possible rules one could follow that did not make it in to the Nine Rules.
1. If you can't see it from the road, don't wear it. Believe it or not, this is actually the slogan of a local jewelry vendor. From the looks of their products, they believe it. When sending a daughter off to college, there is little or no point in suggesting what she should or should not wear because she is going to wear whatever she and her friends think is cool. More important, I am not sure that the ability to see it from the road is exactly what we are going for in daughters. Don't waste your time on rules about how a youngster should dress. Save your energy for the important stuff in the Nine Rules.
2. Do as I say, not as I do. You better be ready to practice the Nine Rules yourself if you are going to have any hope that daughter (or anyone else) will pay any attention to them. Indeed, if you read about the Nine Rules, you will see that they apply to all sorts of life situations. Take Rule 1 for example. Stay out of jail and your kids have a shot at following your lead. Land in jail and try and get out before you have spent an evening as a guest of the state and your kids have a pretty good chance of following that lead as well.
3. If you can't beat them, join them. It is important to be competitive and that is embedded in several rules including Rules 6 and 8. It is not important, however, to join the enemy after the competition. Whatever it was that made them the enemy in the first place is still making them the enemy after the competition. If you can't beat them, keep trying and improving until you can beat them or move on to a competition at which you can beat them would be a better, although long-winded, rule.
4. You can't beat City Hall. Again with "can't" and "beat" in the same sentence. These are not good thoughts. You can beat anyone if you find the right game and get good at it. See Rules 6 and 8. That could be another, less verbose, addition to the Nine Rules.