A rule made to be broken?

I recently read a very short, insignificant, moderately entertaining book called Rules for aging: Resist normal impulses, live longer, attain perfection. You can see the author's tongue planted firmly in cheek even in the title. The author, by the way, is Roger Rosenblatt, whose publisher, HarperCollins, refers to him as an "award-winning essayist for Time and PBS."

Rosenblatt's Rule #1 (which is both Garrison Keillor's and Jim Lehrer's favorite of the rules, according to the inside front cover of the book) made me laugh out loud when I first read it. To wit:

"It doesn't matter. Whatever you think matters -- doesn't. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late, or early...if you were clever, or if you were stupid; if you are having a bad hair day, or a no hair day...if you don't get that promotion, or prize, or house, or if you do. It doesn't matter."*

And of course, "it" doesn't. Not in the Grand Scheme of Things. Or, as we used to say when and where I was growing up: "What'll it matter a hundred years from now?" And no doubt Rule #1 is really an encour-agement to keep ones perspective, similar to the now-annoying cliche "Don't sweat the small stuff...and it's all small stuff."

But. After I'd read the whole book -- which takes maybe half an hour, and which provids plenty of other chuckles (e.g., "Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn't make him wrong.") -- and I went back and read Rule #1 again, I didn't laugh so hard. It is, in fact, if you think about it long enough, a depressing rule. A depress-ing idea. If we don't make things matter, or don't at least convince ourselves that things matter, we become in danger of losing our sense of purpose. And people lacking a sense of purpose tend to sit around staring at the walls or the T.V., living on McDonald's takeout and beer. And, come on, what kind of a life is that?

So we make things matter, we make what we do seem important, necessary, at the very least to ourselves. Thus, we are able to make ourselves get out of bed, prepare decent meals, go every day to a job that we don't much like (or even hate), do this that and the other thing. Because it's necessary, it matters.

Of course, in some cases what we do really is important-- many of the things President Obama (or any president) does, or might do, could have drastic repercussions for millions of people. The dastardly suicide bombers could be said to be doing something that matters, in a highly negative sense, to at least the dozens of innocent people they kill, as well as to those people's families.

But for the rest of us...all us "little people"...let's face it, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the wins and losses, it just doesn't matter.

But pretending it does can keep you sane.

*Rosenblatt, Roger. Rules for aging: Resist normal impulses, live longer, attain perfection, New York: Harcourt, c2000, p. 1.