For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
Well, we have a word for jumbling them up however you feel like: jazz 🙃
Okay, more serious response, at the end of the day it is all about having it sound good. No one’s going to question why you did things a certain way, if it sounds good.
I try to see it more as a shortcut for making things sound good. It’s just a set of known-good strategies that you can apply, if you feel like it.
Like a tube with premixed color. Yes, you can mix your own color, and many times it is necessary to get it just right, but sometimes you just know that a few dots of khaki are what you want.