You Deserve Better

Ah, the classic phrase of comfort! How often I've heard it of late, too. Let's just say that life has been a bit rocky: job troubles, boy troubles, dogs and cats living together...all the good stuff that breeds chaos and melancholy in a young lady's life. And so, as friends and loved ones come to my emotional aid they whisper the phrase: "You deserve to be happy."

But what does it mean to deserve happiness? Do any of us for a single minute think that everyone with good fortune has earned it? That every person who stumbles into luck has actually paid for it all in full? Of course not! If that were the case it wouldn't be luck, now would it? It would be your just reward for services rendered to karma and the world. This idea of justice in life is odd...it rubs against the grain of reality and seems to encourage a fairy-tale sense of fairness that simply doesn't exist. The bad prosper as much as the good and the world spins on.

What I find truly interesting is the sub-concept that we can be destined to undergo pain to achieve the happiness we "deserve". A friend told me recently that the reason I've had troubles finding a new job is because I'm destined for something different. This negates the whole idea of free will (something she found very reassuring): we're not digging that hole we're stuck in - destiny is!

I figure that if we're simply paying off a future delivery of bliss then our troubles are being arranged in some fashion by a universal bill collector...

I only hope my nirvana-to-be is still in vogue by the time I get it off lay-away.

Anti-Altruism: The Golden Rule

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." How very self-centric thinking!

Recently, a friend of mine mentioned a simple law of camaraderie that I had not thought of. She told me that every friend has "bad friend" qualities and "good friend" qualities which we attempt to balance in order to maintain a friendship. This struck me as quite true, though I'd never actively considered it.

Immediately I began to think of my "bad friend" qualities that she might be currently weathering: arrogance, pride, loner tendencies, logic (the enemy of many female friendships), etc. But then I thought of the golden rule and got tangled in a mental pretzel. The thing is, I DO "do unto others" and it is this that chafes them most!

Why? Because, just as we each love in our own way, we each have different friend-needs. I value friends who are challenging and honest, with a generous spice of sarcasm...and so that's the friend I try to be. But if I was a "good friend" wouldn't I try to offer them what they need rather than what I do?

Is the golden rule all that beneficial once you get past the hitting/learning-to-share stage? It seems to me that we are trained from a very young age to think of everyone as versions of ourselves; which leads to some rather awkward social interactions and misunderstandings. The very phrasing of the Golden Rule is meant to put the world into your own terms without ever breaking from the center of the universe (Your rightful place, of course). So what would I propose?

I don't think the golden rule is meant to be taken literally. Maybe what is meant is something more general; when we say "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" we simply mean that we need to extend an open mind and understanding in our dealings with the world....rather in the way we'd like to be approached by it.

(But I'm still not sharing my crayons.)