The first time we rented a holiday house with a pool, I doubted whether it was the right call, because we were only 15 minutes away from the coast anyhow.

It turned out to be the best decision of the whole holiday. The heat outside was unbearable even in the shade, with a continuous light wind blowing, so the only option was a dim room under AC until the late afternoon. Thanks to the pool, we spent our time before lunch in the water, the kid having the time of his life. We would get him out right before lunch, so with a full belly and tired from activity, he would fall asleep like, well, a baby.

By the end of the week, a pool had become a non-negotiable condition of any holiday we take from here on. I never gave the mandatory pool a second thought, but tried it just once after it became a must.

Which made me wonder what other rules I set a long time ago and haven’t challenged once. The first thing that came to my mind was how I handle people.

For most of my life, I have evaluated people on one and zero, yes or no, with standards so high and so badly calibrated that everyone failed eventually. Given enough time, everyone does the thing you do not like, or crosses a line you never told them was there. Nobody survives as a permanent yes, because permanent yes is not possible. The machine took every human I met and moved them slowly into one folder.

The real reason I went solo isn’t the disappointment or the hurt. I think it’s never wanting to owe anyone, as being close means keeping a tab. Someone brings donuts, or returns from a trip with a gift specially chosen for you, or remembers your favorite movie, and now there is a small debt lingering, a thing to remember and repay. Keeping people at arm’s length keeps that tab at zero, and a tab at zero feels clean. Simpler than remembering. No ledger to keep, no one I was quietly in the red to.

It goes both ways. As much as we want to see ourselves as virtuous and not expect return, we still do the accounting. You do something for me, the scale shifts your way. I do something back, and it swings mine. We keep exchanging small efforts across the years. It works as long as we both keep playing. At some point one of us stops trying, the scale drifts past a return worth making, and the other stops too. Neither of us has to say anything. The exchange just quietly ends.

The trouble with my approach was that I had no tab I could withdraw from when needed. You do not get to call someone at 2AM if you never banked it in daylight. Help builds up slowly, in small exchanges that I was deciding weren’t worth the effort.

I had such friendships once. If I’d gotten a call at 2AM asking me to come along, but never ask why, my answer would have been ‘are we taking my car or yours?’ Those ended too, life happened, and I kind of envy people who still have that in their 40s

I kept convincing myself that I was independent, that I could do everything myself, and that I did not need anyone. Which sounds like a good thing, but I always knew it was gonna bite me in the ass one day.

What bothers me is the pool, as it took one week to fix. I had a rule, got it tested, and I updated on the go, not giving it a second thought. The people rule I’ve run for decades, and I knew it was wrong the whole time, but never found the guts to change it. Maybe the issue is it can’t be changed overnight. Maybe it takes longer to open tabs on purpose. Letting someone matter enough to disappoint me, and enough to owe. And I genuinely cannot tell you, even now, whether the sorting was ever good judgment or just the cheapest way to keep the ledger at zero and call the emptiness peace.

But I do know one thing: those very few people I’ve accepted for who they are, and who seem to have accepted me, I will cherish and keep close.