"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.)
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