Rules for rules sake...

If there is one thing that really annoys me it's rule-following to the absolute letter.

Rules are generally a good thing - but I don't believe in absolutes.

Why am I saying this? Well, today I spent the whole morning sitting in a staff room in Japan doing nothing. There was nothing for me to do. No teaching. No lesson planning. Nothing. But I had to be there, and I have to be there for the rest of the summer holidays.

The strange thing is that usually I get a real sense of excitement for summer - as the weather gets hotter and the nights get longer. This year, for the first time, I don't have that same excitement. The endless summer does not appeal.

Why am I moaning? I'm getting paid a good wage to sit on my arse and do nothing. Isn't that what everyone dreams of? Well, that is true to some extent. But why then do so many people in my situation get so pissed off with this? If this was so great, then why do some many English teachers complain about having nothing to do.

I think it boils down to one thing - the following of rules for the sake of following rules. Blooded-mindedness. What really annoys me, is not that I have abolutely nothing to do, (I actually quite enjoy that) but rather my contract says that I have to go to school everyday in the summer holiday. This is what I have to do, whether it is useful or not. There are no 'ifs' or 'buts'. No exceptions. My requests for absence are rejected with the following phase: 'This is not the Japanese way'.

I am not going to say that this is a particularly serious situation. It pisses me off, but in no way is it life threatening. It's a small problem. However, the social trait of following rules without exception is extremely dangerous and life-threatening. This is how wars get started. If people had stood up against the little things which seemed to contravene their own common sense, then maybe the great tyrants of history would never have caused the damage that they did.

Perhaps the greatest thing I had ever learnt at school was to question. Thinking back, this was not something which came easily to me. It took years to learn - years and years of essay writing. I learnt to question and then to give my own point of view. If I had written in any of my finals an answer which went along the lines of - 'Unfortunately, I cannot comment, as this is the British way of doing things' - I would have failed my degree (and by extension not be living and working in Japan right now).

It is so important to think carefully about what you believe in, and not just take the easy road. The people I admire the most (Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Theresa...), are those who took the rocky path and followed what they believed was right within the confines of the law. The ability to question and to reason is what makes human beings so unique and wonderful. It's just a shame when we don't fulfill this potential.