the golden-plated rule.
In our youth, while our minds are still spry with umbilical juice and our behavioral patterns have yet to endure the repetitive conditioning of anything close to a decade, we are urged to abide by one principle, the ethic of reciprocity: treat others they way you want to be treated. Do unto others as you would want done to you.
If moral codes were home furnishings, the golden rule would be a vintage lighted mirror. An idealistic centerpiece, demanding self-sabotaging levels of self-awareness, glamorizing all that is unnatural and muting all that is carnal, accompanied by a wardrobe you will never be able to afford and is perpetually dusty.
As we age, we discover how easily surfaces get scratched, the horror of objects lying still, how our personal need for frivolous enjoyment can so easily supersede anyone else’s holocaustal agony, karma’s willingness to forgive the bad guy, how Santa is really a slave to the Federal Reserve, the pointlessness of politeness, how most of the things we can buy on food stamps don’t have any nutrients, and it becomes more & more glaringly obvious that all that glitters is not gold and in 75% of all cases, (75% being the most believable number used in fictional statistics) may not even be glitter.
We cannot treat others the way we want to be treated because we don’t know who we are, have yet to negotiate what we deserve and are hardly cognizant of the transformational impact that our puny, mortal, ten-fingered treatment could possibly deliver.
In the dim-controlled lighted room of our morality, behind our embellished mirror of starry-eyed youth, we find that the golden rule is no more of a rule than it is golden. It is an hopeless idea, a kamikaze suggestion, a curled-lip expression from an under-aged, sexually ambiguous girl.
Treating people the way we want to be treated in our young age is a distraction to discover our individualized desires and come to terms with our worth. In our adulthood, explore the golden-plated rule: we treat others the way we have been treated.
Hurt people hurt people. The humbled, humble. The falsely inflated, falsely inflate. Those who find themselves broken, find everything broken. Boring people bore. The fulfilled find a way to fill whatever isn’t full. We are the meaning makers, equal parts creators and created.
It is never too late to look in the mirror and have a happy childhood.
Mreeuh Chang
