My Rules: 3. There is a Time and Place for Everything

“There is a time for everything, … a time to kill and a time to heal, … a time to weep and a time to laugh, … a time to search and a time to give up, … a time to love and a time to hate” – King Solomon of Israel

This is one of my rules that I would feel all of my rules would be incomplete without. Each rule has its time and place, and each rule has a time and place in which it does not belong and should be broken. Expanding even further, however, this goes for more-or-less everything in life: everything has a time and place in which it belongs and a time and place in which it does not belong. This rule calls to consider each time and place and learn the wisdom to know what belongs when and where.

This is a continuation of my series about My Rules.

I have been nervous to write about this rule. It is a rule I hold dear, but which I’m probably somewhat prone to over-quoting. As I get older and wiser, I find myself becoming wary of quoting it. I find more and more that it is a silent rule. A guardian of my other rules, if you will. Yet, as the rule states itself, there is a time and a place to quote it.

This rule is especially more than a rule. It is more than a philosophy or a tool, as many of my other rules are. It is a challenge. An honestly difficult challenge.

If everything has its time and place,  how am I to know those times and places for specific things? Nowhere in my rules does it give particular guidance, and I make no outright intention of providing such. Honestly, I don’t think there’s ever a very good guidance available, period. We do our best. We listen to the advice of others who may know more than we do, when we can find such advice. We keep going from there.

This rule challenges me to gain the wisdom to discern everything’s appropriate time and place. It challenges to discern when something does not belong. Yet, hindsight is always 20/20, they say, and maybe there’s a time and place to get it all wrong. This rule would suggest there’s even a time and place to get that all wrong. This rule contradicts itself like that.