The Golden Rule: Adult Edition

That’s right friends, welcome back to elementary school! The Golden Rule, that annoying little “solve all” answer we’ve heard from adults as far back as formal education goes: Treat others the way you want to be treated.

At 8 I was probably using this little rule to my advantage. Telling the teachers they didn’t have to do their homework, and handing out compliments to my friends like I was paid to do so, expecting to get the same in return. Then something happens, well to be specific, something doesn’t happen. The return part.


It’s Tuesday morning, you’re waiting at the table while moms looking for her keys. You pick up the newspaper and glance at the ads. You spot a beautiful pair of shoes you just HAVE to have…$40… no problem. Mom gets paid Friday.

You spend the rest of your week with your head to the ground comparing and contrasting your friends kicks. Complimenting those you like and to the ones you don’t like well…(if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all). Finally, its Friday! You race home before mom gets off, tidy the house up and threaten your siblings lives if they cause mom any stress before you get the official “yes.” Mom caves. You win. Saturday she makes the big buy and suddenly you can’t wait for Monday!

D-Day rolls around and you walk into school like you own the place. Walking up to your friends with false prefaces of conversation to lure the compliments… but they don’t come. Literally nothing. Not even your English teacher whose convinced “you’ve done something with your hair” every three days realizes that you have just made fashion history. Then just like that it happens, your little 8-year-old mind says “fuck it.”  Ok maybe not quite that but you get the point.


You build up a wall, you stop complimenting aloud, and you keep your thoughts to yourself, because somewhere along the line, actions showed you that people don’t always treat you exactly as you treated them.

What a shame- but don’t you worry because after we’ve beat this into our little self-absorbed brains, implanting the need to self preserve our emotions by refusing to feed into anyone elses…We get to spend a good part of our adult lives trying to learn the Golden Rule!

We get so very upset when the lady at the grocery store gives us a “rude look” BUT we choose to not wave to the girl we graduated with out of the fear that she might not wave back! (because, like you know, the world will cease to exist if this happens.)…Now run that against our Golden Rule.. yeah, seems to work out that way.

Luckily some of us realize this. We start waving and start smiling to the upset lady at the store. We give out compliments when they pop into our heads in hopes of brightening someones day. We start to realize that looking foolish has a lot less to do with us and our actions and a lot more to do with those that choose to make us feel this way. We understand that regaurdless of how our compliments,statements and ideas are received we feel a sense of happiness when we relay these personalized messages.We understand that what we put out, both good and bad, do come back to us, and we take responsibility for them both.

When we do this we start to truly understand the importance of The Golden Rule.

Published by

Taylor Parkins

Thinking is totally in.  Twitter handle: Facebook URL:

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