The Golden Rule
“Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.”-Mark Twain
Good morning! When my daughter was in the difficult school years featured in movies like Mean Girls she lashed out at a bully who had been picking on her. When I asked her why, she explained she was following the golden rule “treating others like they were treating her.” I explained that although that is how much of society lives, she had the golden rule backward. I explained that she was half-right. If the bully was practicing the golden rule, then she wouldn’t pick on Sammy in the first place-but just because the bully picked on her, that didn’t make it right to lash back.
Then I uttered all those wise statements that we get to say as moms like, “If a friend told you to jump off a bridge, would you?” and, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” My daughter, being the inquisitive child she is, wanted to know how far the bridge was from the water (in case it would be fun, like a diving board.) She also wanted to know if two wrongs don’t equal a right, what they do equal, because in algebra two negatives make a positive.
Tags: Parenting