Oh boy.

At some point, we wake up, whether early on, midway through, or late into life, and realize what we’ve signed up for.

In this singular (and at times singularly unpleasant) “aha” moment, we realize that “life”, regardless of whatever definition or outcome we may have attached to it, is really nothing more than a lifelong chance to learn lessons.

This is probably why – almost certainly why – the anonymous author of “Rules for Being Human” devotes nearly one-half of the 10 short rules that make up the treatise to the process of learning lessons.

We may not have control over the fact that we will always be learning, but we for sure can decide what our attitude towards the global classroom will be.

The author examines learning lessons from every angle – from liking them to not liking them, from learning them to not learning them, and everything in between.

Rule #2 states:

You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time information school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think they are irrelevant or stupid.

Talk about telling it like it is.

This statement may strike you as contrary to a whole host of possible mentoring scenarios that have “mistake” written all over them.

And yet the anonymous author of “Rules for Being Human” very clearly writes, in rule #3:

There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, of experimentation. The “failed experiments” are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately works.

We may not like it, we may not accept it, but that doesn’t change the truth of this statement one little bit.

Wasn’t it Thomas Edison, the inventor of something none of us can imagine living without – the light bulb – who stated, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that do not work.”

Fantastic.

In rule #4 in “Rules for Being Human”, the author writes:

A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Sometimes in my own life, I rather suspect I am still stuck on Lesson One. I am the world’s oldest kindergartner. But my teachers just won’t give up.

The key here is to change my attitude towards repetition, a task I still sometimes struggle to do.
In our culture, we view repetition as a waste of time. We think we need to “get it right the first time”. How many times were you subjected as a child (or as an adult for that matter) to the admonition that “anything worth doing right is worth doing right the first time?”

But what happens when we don’t KNOW how to do it right the first time? It actually doesn’t make much sense when you think about – that somehow we are supposed to know without instruction how to do something that we’ve never done before.

We are now up to rule #5 in my all-time favorite short essay on what it means to live a human life, “Rules for Being Human”.

The author, who has wisely kept his or her identity well-hidden, has nevertheless achieved a sort of anonymous immortality as the 10 short so-called “rules” in this treatise continue to circulate, passed along again and again as a sort of eternal favor we aren’t sure who to thank for.

Rule #5 states:

Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Do you catch yourself wishing your life could look like this?

I don’t know about you, but I generally feel happiest and most content when I feel like I have gotten everything to stay “just so” for just long enough to breathe a sigh of relief.

As we continue our exploration of “Rules for Being Human”, a short treatise by an anonymous author on the perils and promises of life itself, we come to Rule #6, which reads:

There is not better than here. When your there has become a here, you simply will obtain another there that will again look better than here.

When I first read this rule, my first thought was, “I don’t know this author, but they sure know me!”

I wasn’t too thrilled about it either.

None of us want to think (or at least I personally don’t want to think) that the “there” I am busting my butt to work towards today will become tomorrow’s discarded afterthought.

Frankly, just the thought of it makes my couch and that stack of unwatched DVDs look pretty darned good.

But this is the truth – at least for most of us having the human experience today.

I have spent the last two posts talking about my all-time favorite “mentoring manual”, as I like to call it.

This short piece, composed by an author whose name remains unknown, and entitled simply, “Rules for Being Human”, has done more to reassure and strengthen me for the journey yet ahead than probably any other single piece of literature I have ever read (and I LOVE to read).

For some reason, I started the discussion going backwards, so after reviewing and discussing rules 10, 9, and 8 in previous posts, respectively, in this post we now arrive at Rule #7, which states:

Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

Ouch. Right?

OUCH.

Liberally sprinkled throughout my book on eating disorders and mentoring, Beating Ana, are quotes from my favorite piece of all times (okay, it’s a tie between “Letters to a Young Poet” and this one), “Rules for Being Human”.

Written by an unknown author, this piece speaks to me more clearly than anything else I have ever read about recovery, love, life, hope, and humanity.

In the chapter entitled “Mentoring 101″, I begin by quoting “Rules for Being Human” rule #8:

What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

Sounds a bit harsh at the outset, doesn’t it?

I found it daunting the first several hundred times I read it (the piece sits on my desk, so I see it every day).

To be honest, I still find it daunting…..but now I find it so in a refreshingly honest, liberating way.

One of my favorite quotes comes from an anonymous author.

The piece is entitled “Rules for Being Human”, and it contains 10 short “rules” that are so dead-on accurate that it is little wonder the author chose to keep their identity from us.

This is because, as history clearly shows us, anyone who figures all this out and is still breathing is a clear candidate for either deification or death, depending on society’s general mood at the time.

In my book about mentoring and eating disorders, Beating Ana, I end the book with one of my favorite of the “rules”, #9:

Your answers lie inside you. The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.

If you’ve ever seen “Finding Nemo”, you know that not being able to remember is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, it can help you remember in a deeper way why life is so precious and worth living.

The 10th and final “rule”, by the way, simply states: You will forget all this.

And I do. Everyday.