The Golden Rule

Life's Most Important Rule

   It was a cool, fall day when I learned life’s most important t lesson.  I believe my dad and I were picking up a pizza, which means it must’ve been a Friday. I was sitting in my dad’s car, staring out the window, thinking about leaves. I Where I live, during fall the leaves don’t fall off of tree. There aren’t any leaves to fall off the trees, really. Pine trees surround the area, and it’s impossible to make a decent leaf-pile with pine needles. This fact absolutely crushed my little first-grade heart. I just continued to sit in my dad’s corvette, staring out thinking about the leaves, inwardly complaining.

   Soon, my inward complaining shifted towards more outward complaining. I wasn’t complaining about leaves, though; I was complaining about this girl in my first grade class who I absolutely did not like. Once the girl and I had been friends, but after a certain incident involving a password and slide, we’ve disliked each other. Well, at least I didn’t like her. I didn’t know how she felt about me. Still, I continued to bash this girl until my dad asked, “Do you know the most important rule in life? It’s even more important than the ones your mom and I give you. The Golden Rule?”

   I was a curious child. I wanted to know everything there was about the world, and absorb all the information my little brain could possible hold. Of course I wanted to know this important rule. Plus, gold was a really pretty color, so because of that, the rule must be pretty as well, right? I piped up from my angry, gloomy state and asked my dad to tell me the golden rule.

   My dad continued staring at the road ahead and stated, “The ‘Golden Rule’, the most important rule in life, is the rule that says to treat others the way that you want them to treat you. Before you go off and do something to someone else, stop and ask yourself, ‘would I like it If they did this to me?’ The same goes for what you say to others. Before you say something, just double check to make sure that you wouldn’t mind if someone said the same to you. If you follow this rule, you’ll go far in life.”

   Only when he finished explaining did my dad look at me. Maybe he just wanted to make sure I looked like I absorbed everything he just said. I turned back towards the window and thought. This was the ‘Golden Rule’. How could I not follow it? It was the most important rule to follow after all. The longer I let the thought sink in, the clearer it became that I needed to follow this rule. The next time I saw my nemesis, I vowed to be nicer towards her. After all, I never was much of a rebel.

   The lesson here is pretty obvious. The ‘Golden Rule’ is absolutely an important rule to follow during one’s lifetime. To treat others the way I like to be treated has gotten me far in life. Following this rule has helped me make plenty of new friends, for one thing. This rule is definitely hard to follow, because it’s easy to forget the rule and make an offhand remark. Nevertheless, if one always tries their hardest to follow this rule, good things will happen.