The Unimportance of Little Things
Years ago I wrote about how when rules are suddenly imposed on a group of people there is a resulting increase in the amounts of stress and arguments among the same group of people. I wrote about how a park I used to live next to in Vancouver one day introduced a bunch of rules which described which trails could be used by people walking their dogs. Some were on-leash, some off-leash, some weekends only. It was a mess. Where there were used to be no confrontations between people there were now regular confrontations where people would point to the rule and say you were no longer allowed here or there. The thought again popped into my mind a few weeks back when I saw how my children had set the table. The fork was on the right side of the plate, the knife on the left. The cutting edge of the knife was facing out - away from the plate. The napkin was on the left. The glass was centred above the plate. I thought - gosh they have it all wrong! Did they not learn anything over the y