Hey, y’all. Want some rules for life? It’s not exhaustive, but I promise if you take these to heart your life will be better than if you didn’t.

Rule 1: Cheaters Always Cheat

Here’s something I don’t understand: why someone will be with someone who will cheat on someone else to be with you. They’ve already proven they’re a cheater. Why, then, does it surprise you when they cheat on you? You already know exactly what kind of person you’re involved with.

They will cheat on you. There is no “he changed” or “she changed”. A leopard does not change its spots, and a cheater will always be a cheater. I’m sure that someone can turn over a new leaf on occasion, but why risk it? It’s so rare that it may as well never happen.

Rule 2: Easy Come, Easy Go

Another thing I don’t understand is why people will get physically involved with someone very soon after first meeting them, and then somehow think it’s going to work. It probably won’t.

It’s not for moral reasons I say this, but it’s instead that people do not value cheap things. For example, when I’m listing something on Craigslist, I always charge something, even if I want to give it away. It’s not because I want to make money, it’s because people don’t take free listings seriously. Ive found it much harder and more awkward to give something away than to sell it. It’s the same with people. If you offer your body quickly, it will be treated as a cheap commodity, and will be discarded when a nicer, just as cheap, model comes along. Why not? Nothing was invested into it!

Again, I’m not making a moral argument here. Maybe you’re okay with just getting your rocks off. But so many people get entangled in a situation that could have just been avoided if they’d acted like they were in possession of something of value.

There are exceptions. Rarely, it works. But mostly it leads to heartbreak.

Rule 3: Prejudice is Never Going Away

Currently, there is a major push to reduce the effects of prejudice in the workplace and other social situations. For the most part, I am not opposed to this. In principle.

But, in practice, it’s never going away, and people are going to make snap judgments about you based upon your appearance of other things. It’s human nature and that will never be eradicated.

You are in control of many of the ways that you’re perceived, though. How you present yourself is important. Being covered with face tattoos is, like it or not, probably going to lower your employability, and no amount of social activism is going to change that. Dressing well is, again like it or not, probably going to put you on a higher footing than other job candidates, again, all things being equal. Some things you can’t change, but some things are within your control, and some hills aren’t really worth dying on.

At some point, you are going to have to make a decision: are you willing to play within rules you don’t like to improve your position in the world? If not, that’s totally cool, but you’re gonna have to live with the consequences of that choice.

Rule 4: Risk Management is Your Responsibility

One of the worst things to come out of modern culture is the idea that risk management is “blaming the victim”

Let’s say that you are going into a bad area of town at 2 AM, wearing fancy clothing and shouting racial epithets. Odds are you’re gonna get beat up, robbed, or worse. Are those who beat you up, rob you, or worse in the right? Absolutely not! But at the end of the day, the situation was entirely avoidable, if you had made different choices. If you make a bad choice and find yourself in a bad situation, it does no good to say “it’s their fault for doing it”. It is. You’re also still in a bad situation.

The best outcome is for it to not happen in the first place. And that is, more than you think, entirely within your control.

Of course there are exceptions. Those folks in the Florida condo who pretty much died in their sleep really couldn’t have realistically seen it coming. There were different choices to be made, but they were so subtle and non obvious that you may as well just call it a fluke. But in many cases, you know when something bad is likely to happen. If you simply don’t do the thing that leads to it happening, you’re going to be in a much better position. Better that than bemoaning someone harming you after the fact.

Again, they shouldn’t. That’s wrong. But I’m sure you’d obviously rather it hadn’t happened at all, right?

If you just take these four rules to heart, you’ll save a lot of heartbreak. I’ll post more as I think of them.