I recently finished listening to Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng. (I’m taking advantage of my Audible membership and getting way more “reading” done via audiobooks.) A full review will come soon, but since May in general, and this week in particular, is CRAZY, for now I will share one of my favorite passages from the book.
Little Fires Everywhere explores, among other things, how people decide what is “right” and “wrong”. Ng does a great job of presenting sympathetic characters who stand on opposite sides of an issue, leaving the reader to decide who is right or wrong, if anyone is.
Near the end of the book, in chapter 16, one of the characters thinks:
For her, it was simple… one had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things, when in fact most of the time, there were simply ways. None of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.
Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
As someone who has always liked “rules”, this passage hit me hard. In a good way. As I’m getting older, I’m realizing that I need to be more flexible in how I decide “right” and “wrong”. And that sometimes, rules serve a purpose, but sometimes they cause problems.
Where do you stand on rules?
Thanks for getting nerdy with me!
Indeed a GREAT quote!