If the Rule You Followed Brought You to This...

I was on the train this morning, coming back from spending Christmas with my family. The long ride stretched out before me. A five-hour limbo of rumbling steel and passing landscapes. As the train barrelled forward, it unwittingly dragged me backward, through the places I thought I’d left behind. Old stomping grounds emerged from the grey skies: past residences, workplaces, and streets I used to know better than my own thoughts. Each one surfaced like a fragment of a dream. Faint, distant, and yet deeply familiar.

It wasn’t sad, but it wasn’t happy either. It just was. I found myself staring at these pieces of my life with a strange detachment, reflecting on the last five years that had passed. And in the rhythm of the train, in the relentless forward motion that mirrored my own aimless searching, a single line rose to the surface of my thoughts: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

I’ve carried that line with me for years. It’s from No Country for Old Men, and it feels less like a quote and more like a knife. Sharp, brutal, and entirely unavoidable. It demands reckoning. It asks the questions we spend our lives avoiding. What rules have I followed? What paths have I walked with blind faith, only to find myself here, no closer to what I was chasing?

Looking out the train window, I realized that every rule I’ve ever followed has led me to frustration. The rule of stepping out of your comfort zone. The rule of persistence. The rule of “grind harder, and you’ll get there.” They all sound noble, don’t they? They sound like the keys to success, the mantras of those who’ve “made it.” But when I look at my life, when I look at the wreckage of all the things I’ve tried to force into being, I have to ask: what use were those rules?

Every goal I chased, every plan I meticulously crafted, every relationship I tried to hold together with sheer will, it all crumbled. Not because I didn’t try hard enough, but because the trying itself was the problem. Effort became a vice, squeezing the life out of everything I touched. And when it all fell apart, when nothing went the way I thought it should, the only thing left was doubt.

That’s the cruel irony of it all: the harder you push, the further away it all seems. And in that space, doubt festers. Insecurity creeps in, whispering that you’re not enough, that you’ll never be enough. You can mask it with success, with the applause of others, with money or status, but it doesn’t go away. It doesn’t care about what you’ve achieved. It cares about what you’ve ignored: your true self, your true nature.

As I sat on the train, watching the past roll by, I thought about all the times I’d followed the rules. Work harder. Plan better. Be more. And yet, none of it ever felt right. The rules I followed brought me here, to this train, to this reflection, to this realization that I’ve been running in circles.

Life doesn’t reward effort. Not the kind of effort that comes from forcing, from grasping, from trying to wrestle the universe into submission. The more you try to control it, the more it slips through your fingers. The things that matter, the things that last, don’t respond to force. They find you when you stop trying. They emerge when you step out of the game, out of the race, and simply let life be.

And that’s the paradox, isn’t it? We’re taught to follow the rules, to play the game, to push harder. But what if the rules are wrong? What if the game is rigged? What if everything you’re chasing isn’t ahead of you, but already beside you, waiting for you to notice?

I thought about all the times I’d ignored that voice inside me, the one that knew the rules were a lie. The voice that whispered, “This isn’t the way.” But I didn’t listen. I was too busy trying, too busy forcing, too busy believing that if I just worked harder, it would all fall into place.

And now, here I am at the end of the year, on this train, realizing that the rules I followed had only brought me here. To this quiet, detached acceptance of the truth: the rules were never the answer.

So, what then? What’s left when you do away with the rules? The answer is terrifyingly simple. You stop. You let go. You let life unfold, not as a series of achievements or milestones, but as it is. Because everything you’re searching for isn’t out there, waiting to be won.

It’s here, now, waiting for you to see it.

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