By a railway man who learned most of them the hard way

There are rules in life that nobody ever bothers to explain. You don’t learn them in school, they aren’t written in manuals, and no sensible adult sits you down at eighteen with a leather-bound book titled “Here Are the Things That Would Have Saved Me From Looking Like an Idiot.” Instead, these rules arrive gradually, like unexpected bills, usually after you’ve done something monumentally foolish. The older you get, the more of them you collect, until one day you realize your entire personality is basically a pile of lessons learned the hard way and a deep suspicion of anything that sounds like “a great idea.”

Take the first rule.

If someone fixes things for a living, listen to them.

This should be obvious, but somehow it isn’t. People will happily ignore a man who has spent thirty years repairing machines, yet immediately believe a PowerPoint presentation produced by someone whose greatest mechanical achievement is replacing the batteries in a television remote. As an engineer—and a railway man at heart—I have seen this many times. A plan arrives from the office. It’s beautifully printed, covered in arrows, diagrams, and language so complicated it could make a lawyer cry. Everyone nods seriously. Everyone agrees it’s brilliant. Then a man who has been working on the machine for twenty years looks at it, scratches his head, and says, “That’s not going to work.”

And of course he’s right. Because the fellow with the grease on his hands understands reality, which is something the office occasionally forgets exists.

Another rule involves dogs.

If a dog doesn’t trust someone, pay attention.

Dogs possess an astonishing ability to judge character. Your dog will greet you every morning as though you’ve just returned from defeating a dragon. Tail wagging, face beaming, complete and utter joy. You could have simply walked to the mailbox, but the dog behaves as though you’ve crossed the Sahara carrying medicine for sick children.

But when someone else walks in and the dog suddenly freezes—ears up, eyes narrowed, tail going rigid like a suspicious customs officer—you make a mental note. Dogs don’t care about charm. They don’t care about fancy speeches. They operate entirely on instinct, which is probably why they rarely end up lending money to the wrong person.

Travel teaches a few rules as well. I once spoke to a Belgian who explained, with remarkable calmness, that Belgium has so many cemeteries because it is where Britain and Germany historically settled their disagreements. He said this the way someone might casually mention the weather. And when you think about it, the man had a point. History is full of grand speeches, heroic charges, and impressive uniforms, but eventually it all ends in a quiet field with a row of gravestones and someone muttering, “Well that escalated.”

Travel also teaches you that people everywhere are surprisingly similar. Different languages, different food, different music—but the same habits. People still laugh at dinner tables, still complain about the weather, and still behave in baffling ways. For instance, no matter which country you’re in, there will always be someone who insists on feeding a squirrel or a chicken. And within five minutes that squirrel or chicken will bring thirty of his closest friends, climb onto the roof, and begin a highly organized campaign of harassment.

Family, meanwhile, provides some of the most important rules of all.

My grandmother had the sort of wisdom that didn’t arrive with speeches or lectures. It came quietly, the way truth often does. She once told me that love is the truth and everything else is just noise. At the time I nodded politely while thinking about lunch. Years later you realize she was absolutely right. Love for family, love for people, love for life—that’s the only thing that survives all the nonsense.

My mother taught patience. Not the polite kind people pretend to have while tapping their feet, but the real sort. The kind that sits calmly through chaos and waits for the storm to pass. She could outwait arguments the way a mountain outwaits weather.

My father, on the other hand, demonstrated another rule entirely: stand firm when it matters. Strength isn’t about shouting or making a spectacle of yourself. It’s about knowing when something is worth defending and having the backbone to defend it properly. That integrity matters and that it is one of the measures of a man.

Then there’s another rule that life teaches you, usually after a painful episode involving misplaced trust.

Never give your full trust to someone you don’t really know.

This sounds simple until you remember that human beings are remarkably good at pretending to be wonderful. People can appear charming, honest, and trustworthy right up until the moment they prove they aren’t. This is usually when you suddenly find the metaphorical knife sticking out of your back. So trust should be built slowly, the way you build anything important: carefully, one piece at a time. Rushing the process tends to end with disappointment and the sudden urge to say, “Right, well that was a mistake.”

Which leads nicely to another rule.

Don’t expect too much from people.

Expectations are dangerous things. They sit quietly in your mind building enormous castles made of hope. Then reality arrives carrying a sledgehammer. I know this from experience. Disappointment has a way of appearing precisely when you’ve convinced yourself everything will go perfectly. However—and this is important—you mustn’t let that turn you into a miserable cynic. Always give people the benefit of the doubt. Just do it carefully. Keep your eyes open. And avoid becoming the sort of person who assumes the worst about everyone, because those people are exhausting and usually wrong.

Then we arrive at one of the finest unwritten rules of all.

Never underestimate the importance of small moments.

Gardening in the spring. Watching the leaves turn in autumn. Sitting quietly in the evening while the day settles down. Sharing meals. Laughing about stories that become funnier every year. These moments rarely look important at the time. Nobody writes songs about them and there’s no dramatic music playing in the background. But somehow they are the ones that stay with you.

Especially when you have a grandson. Because suddenly the small things—a walk in the yard, a silly story, a shared laugh—start to feel like the entire point of the journey.

And eventually you discover the final unwritten rule.

Life isn’t really about speed.

It’s about direction.

You can travel across continents, work serious professions, and see a great deal of the world, yet still discover that the most meaningful parts of life are beautifully simple. Good people. Honest work. The wisdom of a grandmother. The patience of a mother. The strength of a father. A loyal dog who thinks you are the greatest human being ever created.

And a small house somewhere in Virginia where the seasons pass, the garden grows, and occasionally a racoon appears on the porch, looks you directly in the eye, and steals a tomato with the confidence of a seasoned criminal.

Which, now that I think about it, might be another unwritten rule entirely.

Never trust a racoon, or a squirrel.

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