So you’re drivin’ down the road just a hummin’ a tune.
When you get cut off in your car by some big ass buffoon.
You get real angry while you’re shacking your fists.
Your face gets beet red because you’re super fucking pissed.
Don’t they have any idea who you are?
As you sit there real angry in your beat up old car?
Get out of my because I’m already very late.
I can’t afford to miss this really important date.
When you get where you’re going you’re still hopping mad.
And now this of yours has gone from good to really bad.
But when it becomes your turn to do the right thing.
You decided to drive through traffic with a whoosh and a zing.
It doesn’t matter if the driver you cut off is yelling and screaming,
Because there you sit in your car happy and beaming.
Does this story I’m telling sound real familiar to you?
I am sure it does since we’ve all been there too.
So try not to forget what they taught you in school.
“Do unto others” is what is known as the golden rule.
I thought I would do something a little different today by starting off with a poem. Don’t worry I’m not going to quit my day job to become a poet doing slam poetry like some beatnik. The rhyme came to me in the car and I thought it would be fun to run with it. For a guy who really doesn’t like poetry, I definitely had fun writing it.
If you hadn’t guessed by now, I wanted to write about the golden rule. It’s the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” rule many of us grew up hearing. (Apparently is from Matthew Chapter 7 verse 12 in the Christian Bible. Who knew? Not this guy).
Having two boys, I actually think of this quote quite often. My kids have a tendency to have a “Do unto others but fuck you if you do unto me,” mentality. I’m constantly telling my oldest if he wants his younger brother to treat him nicely, he might need to be nice first. This goes over like a fart in church and they are soon back at it. Then, all I want to do is shack the shit out of both of them, which only escalates the situation.
Then I started to think about how we, as human beings, tend to treat each other. It all makes sense. Of course my kids, and I’m sure this is most kids, are assholes because the world continuously gives them bad role models. We are horrible to each other and then wonder why people are horrible right back. We do not want to give other any leeway but expect tons in return.
All of us have bad days. We didn’t get enough sleep, receive some bad news, or forgot to do something important and, whether we mean to or not, we take it out on others. We yell or get snippy or talk behind their backs and it’s okay but the moment it happens to us we lose our minds.
It actually goes even further than this too. I happened upon an article called “You Teach Others How to Treat You” by a Dr. Perry, who runs the MakeItUltraTM Psychology site, which take this concept one step further. In this article, he explains our subconscious habits can transfer to those closest to us creating self-fulfilling prophecies. What this means is the way we treat others is how they will treat us. If we are sarcastic or angry or passive aggressive then, over time, the people closest to us will return the favor. We then wonder why we are continuously surrounded by these traits feeling like we are bad judges of character.
One of the things I semi-joke about around my wife is she only keeps me around as a free live-in babysitter and once the kids are old enough she’ll move onto greener pastures. If she does decide to leave me, when the kids are old, I can easily tell myself I wasn’t surprised. I’ve predicted it for years. What I didn’t realize, until now, is this could be signaling to her I don’t value her or our relationship and I could be subconsciously distancing myself from her to lessen the hurt I’m expecting to feel. Then everything I do or don’t do confirms these signals until she’s had enough and leaves. If she leaves, is it her fault or was I too much of a dumbass to realize I’ve been pushing her away for years?
The point is, the way we treat people is typically how others we will treat us in response. The more we interact with someone the more those habits become ingrained in them until their reaction is subconscious as well. We, also, tend to say one thing but do another making us walking, talking hypocrite. This in turn imprints on our children and the cycle continues.
If we want to break the cycle, we have to look at ourselves first. We have to see how we are acting and treating those around us, and if we don’t like what we see we need to make a change. We need to “start with the man in the mirror. We need to ask him to change his ways.” (Thank you Michael Jackson for helping with this post. RIP.) We need to find compassion for ourselves and extend this compassion to those around us. This isn’t a one time thing, either, but something we need to work on every day.
I’ll end with something I “stole” from Noah Kagan and say, “Go call or text someone that you love them, right now!” It might just make their day!