The Ridiculous Rules We Secretly Follow

If you think about it, life is full of rules that no one wrote down, but somehow we all obey them. They’re not laws, not traditions just these invisible agreements that keep us moving through life like well-trained background characters in a very strange play.

Take this one: when you’re walking down the street and lock eyes with a stranger, you look away immediately, as if there’s a timer ticking down to social doom. Why? Who invented that?

Or how about the unwritten law of elevators: everyone stares at the numbers, never at each other, and God forbid anyone talks unless it’s about the weather.

A few more of life’s secret “rules” we all somehow know:

• You’ll always choose the slowest checkout line, no matter what math you did in your head.
• When the Wi-Fi stops working, you’ll try the same thing five times (refresh, refresh, refresh) as if the internet gods might change their mind.
• Someone has to say “bless you” when you sneeze even strangers. Without it, the silence feels criminal.
• If you drop food, you’ll perform that lightning-fast three-second-rule rescue, pretending germs don’t exist.
• Every group of friends has “the one who takes the pictures” and “the one who never replies but always shows up anyway.”

Why we play along

These ridiculous rules might seem silly, but they make the chaos of life feel… organized. They’re tiny scripts we all agree to follow so society doesn’t collapse into total awkwardness. Imagine if people actually made eye contact in elevators. Imagine if nobody acknowledged sneezes. Civilization might not survive.

The joy of noticing

Here’s the fun part: once you start paying attention, you’ll see these rules everywhere. And when you notice them, life suddenly feels lighter, funnier. You realize that being human is basically one big improv show where none of us got a script, so we just copy each other’s weirdness.

A little permission slip

So maybe the next time you catch yourself following one of these invisible rules, break it just for fun. Hold eye contact with that stranger. Crack a joke in the elevator. Start clapping when the plane lands just to see who joins in.

Because honestly, life is serious enough. Leaning into the ridiculous makes it brighter, funnier, and way more human.