A couple of days ago I was having lunch with a friend when an old memory resurfaced, one of those small stories that stay with you not because of their drama but because of what they quietly reveal about how we move through the world.
When I was studying law in Bologna in the early 2000s, the days before the exams revolved around libraries. I never liked studying alone, so I shifted from one place to another depending on the mood, the workload, or the simple need for a different kind of silence. My favorite ones were the CICU (the Biblioteca Giuridica where you could talk with fellow students without being exiled); Villa Spada (when I needed trees and fresh air); and Palazzo Paleotti (for those Saturdays when I wanted a more focused atmosphere). Each library had its own personality, its own rituals, its own unspoken understanding with the students who inhabited it.
Among all of them, one stood in a category of its own: Via Zamboni 33. I called it “the prison,” half in jest, half in truth. I have not been there for at least fifteen years, so I do not know if anything has changed, but at the time the rules were almost monastic. You could not enter in the study rooms with a backpack, you could bring at most two books, you could not leave the room more than twice a day, and your lunch break had a designated time slot. Yet the rule that made the place legendary was another one entirely: you could not put your bottle of water on the table.
For someone like me, who drinks three litres of water a day in winter and four in summer, that rule felt less like an inconvenience and more like a cosmic joke aimed at me personally.
The first time I studied there, I tested the boundaries. I placed the bottle on the table with the innocence of someone who hoped nobody would notice. Someone did. They asked me to remove it. I obliged. An hour later, out of habit, I placed it back. This time the secretary appeared. Calm, precise, almost ceremonial in her tone. “Sir, these are the rules. If they don’t work for you, you can leave.” No anger. No judgment. Just clarity.
I remember ruminating for a while after she left, staring at the bottle and realising that I had options. I could fight the rule. I could launch a petition, request a meeting with the director, write a manifesto on hydration rights. I could turn it into a personal crusade. Or I could simply acknowledge that the environment had been built around a different logic, one that did not need my approval to exist, and choose whether to stay or go somewhere else.
That moment stayed with me because the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that we often invest a disproportionate amount of energy trying to redesign settings that are simply not aligned with us. We act as if every discomfort should be corrected, every rule negotiated, every scenario adapted to our preferences. Yet some rules work perfectly for those who created them. Some spaces are designed for certain people and not for others. It is not a matter of good or bad. It is a matter of compatibility, and unless we consciously choose discomfort as a form of growth, sometimes the healthiest choice is simply to move towards places where the rules are aligned with how we function. Places where we can breathe and build our own rhythm instead of fighting someone else’s.
Years later, I began to appreciate that rule in a different light. I realised that I do not mind strict rules at all, as long as they are transparent from the beginning. What truly unsettles me is when someone changes the terms “during the trip,” quietly shifting expectations halfway through the journey. You see it everywhere. A career path that suddenly no longer resembles its promises. A relationship that rewrites its boundaries without saying so aloud. A collaboration that changes direction without the courtesy of a conversation. In those moments, the discomfort does not come from the rule itself but from the absence of clarity. When the rules are clear, the responsibility is on us. We can adapt, we can stay, or we can walk away.
In the end, incompatible rules will always exist. They are part of life, part of institutions, part of relationships. But once we recognise them for what they are, the decision is no longer about winning or losing. It becomes about alignment. About choosing the places that nourish us rather than drain us. About accepting that sometimes the most empowering act is not to fight the rule, but to choose the table (well, the library….) where we want to sit.
