173. The Rebel

She was always getting in trouble for breaking the rules. As a child, she was regularly reprimanded, by both parents and teachers. She was a source of infinite frustration for them, as she always did whatever she wanted to do instead of what they told her to do.

Her “problem” was that she could not bring herself to do something simply because another person told her to do it. Their commands never seemed to carry any force for her, even when she knew she would be punished. The only time she did what someone wanted was when their rules happened to align with what she was already going to do anyway.

She refused to learn the ways and systems of others. She could never be obedient or submissive. Such things were simply impossible for her. She was instead labelled stubborn, intransigent, or even wildly reckless. This did not bother her. It actually emboldened her resolve to always and only do what she thought was the right thing to do.

Whenever she would prevail over someone’s ignorant rules she would feel righteous and vindicated. She would take it as evidence that she was justified in ignoring what other people told her to do. Of course, this was not always the case. Sometimes her rebellions caused far more harm than she ever expected. And so she eventually learned to distrust her righteousness. It made her wrongly think she was invincible and that others could not be hurt by her actions. She realized she had to be just as skeptical of her own commands as those of anyone else.

As she grew older, she learned when to rebel and when to play along. Playing along was really a way of saving her energy for another battle. In the safety of her own mind, she still opposed everything, subjecting it to endless doubt and criticism. The point of this, she thought, was to see what really mattered and what she could discard.

It was her skepticism that she eventually came to recognize as her most important ability. It made her attentive and conscientious, and it allowed her to see how everything could be different from what people said it had to be. But she never stopped breaking the rules. She just discovered more interesting and creative ways to subvert them.