Summer is finally truly upon us – starting with that weird two-day celebration of Canada Day.

Somehow the brain just doesn’t want to compute that most stores were open on Canada Day itself, but everything was required to shut down on July 2. This was apparently a quirk of the rules governing statutory holidays.

The absurdity of closing everything for Canada Day on July 2 (while continuing to hold celebrations, fireworks, etc, on July 1) is a minor one, except for those unfortunate souls who were unable to participate in the festivities with their families because they were required to work, and for the shopkeepers who lost sales on Monday. But it is illustrative of a larger issue that all of us deal with at one point or another in our lives.

Sometimes the rules that we make for ourselves and others make sense, until suddenly they don’t. What do we do then? For many of us, rules have an intrinsic value of their own – we do things because we are supposed to, following the rules. But what if we conclude that the rule is wrong or nonsensical?

The discomfort that comes from trying to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time is called cognitive dissonance. It can be very distressing, especially if one of those ideas is a deeply held belief that we have had since childhood.

Childhood beliefs are a funny thing – we know intellectually that every belief is just a thought that we have repeated so many times that we hold it to be true. But because we have absorbed these beliefs from our parents and other influential adults, at a time when our minds were particularly susceptible, it is very hard to accept that those beliefs might not be true.

When people become disillusioned with the church or belief system they grew up with, for example, it can be very traumatic. Not just because it can damage relationships, but because it is very painful to change a very deep-seated belief.

Another fairly common example of cognitive dissonance is when a child comes out to their parents or other family members as being LGBTQ+. For people who were raised with the idea that “those people” are wrong or sick or disgusting or immoral, it can be a very painful experience to be confronted with the fact of their beloved child being one of “those people”. That deep-seated belief is now in direct contradiction of their knowledge and love of their child. Regardless of how that family drama works out (and one hopes that love would win in the end), there is an unavoidable painful transition through that cognitive dissonance.

Rules are important in our lives – everything would be chaos without them. But sometimes it’s important to recognise when a rule is doing more harm than good, and it’s time for an overhaul.