I vividly recall sitting in Sunday School at a very young age being taught many bible verses, perhaps one of the most memorable being "The Golden Rule," Matthew 7:12: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." In my religion, this is something that most people recognize and try to practice in their lives; however, it has been widely adopted among other demographics.

Don't get me wrong, I do follow many little rules and ideas important to my religious faith, but I don't follow The Golden Rule.

As I've gotten older, I have realized that treating people like you want to be treated doesn't always make the situation right or better. I want people to treat me with respect of course, and I treat them with respect not because I want it back, but because they're humans who are important. When I'm upset, I need a few days before I'm ready to talk about it. When some of my friends are upset, they're ready to talk about it right away. If I treated them the way I'd like to be treated, they wouldn't appreciate me waiting days to talk about why they are upset.

I could be completely overthinking this tradition of treating others the way you want to be treated, but I also still recognize the meaning behind it. Simply put: if we want to be treated nicely, we should treat others nicely. But if we really analyze it and apply it to those who maybe don't follow the same religion, or dig deeper into what it means to have interpersonal relationships, then this rule doesn't really need to be followed as strictly.

In relationships, I may want one thing, and my partner may want another. We might be looking for different things, so respectfully is really the only way we should be mutually treating each other. In the professional world, if you have a job to help a client, you wouldn't want to help them with something only you want, if you know they want otherwise. If you were providing therapy to someone, you wouldn't necessarily treat the person like they're you, because they aren't.

We are all raised differently with different backgrounds and personalities, and while we should all treat each other with respect, the way we view respect can be different and that's the beauty of investing time into others. Love people, but take time to get to know them and figure out how they'd want to be treated.