I’ll be the first to admit that I have spent pretty much the entirety of my life with The Golden Rule of “treat others the way you want to be treated” ingrained in the back of my head as the single most important rule of life.
Ever since I was a young girl, my mother would tell me that in order to foster good, healthy relationships with my peers and elders, I needed to think about how I would want to be treated in any given situation and treat those around me in that exact manner.
But it wasn’t until I picked up a copy of “How To Be Happy: Not a Self-Help Book. Seriously.” by Iain Thomas (a brilliant book that I highly recommend) that I realized we actually all have it backward. Treating people the way we want to be treated isn’t the solution. Rather, most of the time, it’s the problem.
When we’re young, our sense of identity is minimal, and this principle is taught in order to ultimately help us grow a general awareness of the feelings of those around us. Relationships are simple at this stage in life, and as long we remember The Golden Rule, we believe we know how to navigate the waters. And when it comes to navigating the surface, we do.
But much like the ocean, relationships and human emotion are much deeper and far more complex than what we see on the surface. As we grow older and start to discover more about ourselves and our infinitely varying needs, treating each other the way we want to be treated becomes a hindrance to our ability to build relationships and truly understand one another, more so than a guiding compass.
Because we grew up believing that everyone wants to be treated in the exact same way that we want to be treated, we never learned the truth about human emotions-- that no two people feel or express them the same way, and that there truly is no better or worse. Instead, we created an illusory status-quo centered around our personal wants and feelings that causes us to now reject those who deviate from it, rather than try and understand them. In romantic relationships especially, this lack of awareness often is the root of many issues and arguments in regards to communication, understanding, and support that have the tendency to lead to a separation that can, most of the time, be prevented.
Don’t get me wrong, treating others the way we want to be treated is a great introductory principle that works fairly well at the elementary level, as it teaches the fundamentals of respect and sincerity. But when it comes to experiencing deeper, more meaningful relationships, this motto only scratches the surface, and therefore only allows for a surface understanding.
Even though it’s been ingrained in our heads since we were kids, this principle shouldn’t be the one we live by for our whole lives. As we are constantly growing and learning, we should simultaneously be adapting the way we think and act to complement.
Here’s the excerpt that helped me do just that:
“Just because you feel things a certain way doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way too. Sometimes the problem isn’t that we should treat others the way they want to be treated, the problem is that we do, and we don’t realise that actually, we should treat others how they want to be treated.”
I’ve been living by this philosophy every day for the past seven months, and I can honestly say that it’s helped me become the person I am today. It’s made me a better and more understanding daughter, friend, companion, and, overall, person. But most of all, it's helped me gain a great sense of self-awareness and has taught me that it's okay to feel the things I feel the way I feel them, when I feel them, and I how feel them.
So, the greatest piece of advice I might ever be able to give is this:
Stop treating people the way you want to be treated, and start treating others the way they want to be treated, whether it’s your best friend, your significant other, your professors, or even the security guards in your residence hall. You might just be amazed at what you can learn when you stop floating on the surface and dive in.
